Correlation is not the same as causation, I get that. But the past week I felt positively wrung out, crumpled up, and stomped upon at the end of every workday. And every day was a full-court press to write four pages of user documentation by EOD, using Anthropic Claude as my research assistant.
Are the two in any way connected? Is going head-to-head with a robot collaborator leaving me feeling weary and hopeless at the end of each day?
Possibly. A study titled “When AI Leads to Brain Fry” in the Harvard Business Review does seem to show that certain ways of using AI are driving employees into cognitive overload and decision fatigue.
A finance director wrote: “I had been back and forth with AI reframing ideas, synthesizing data, forming and organizing the flow of pillars and work…I couldn’t even comprehend…if what I had created even made sense…just couldn’t do anything else and had to revisit the next day when I could think.”
In my case I had a document that I wanted Claude to review for overlap with existing documents. The AI returned a two-page philosophical discourse on “the two spines problem.” It suggested I use option B. When I asked for clarification, it found new information and reversed its recommendation. Both bits had parts of the answer I needed, but it was exhausting teasing it out.
That alone doesn’t seem to explain the deep moral weariness that slams me at the end of each workday. Unless—it does.
