The promise of AI was that it would save us all time by automating our clerical tasks, like email, personal admin, and running programs in the background. In reality, researchers are showing the opposite is happening: We’re burning out.
There are two phenomena happening here. When you are freed up from lower-level work — say, email writing — doing exclusively high-level work, such as analyzing complex data sets, is very taxing on the brain. Second, simply being given a tool that helps us do so much more creates a double-edged sword where people are more engaged and excited about their work, but also work longer hours because the volume has increased overall.
