AI Brain Fry: The Burnout Factor We Need to Address
Feeling brain fried? It might be your use of AI.
When AI first appeared on the scene, we were told it would make us more efficient, productive, and there was this underlying promise that it would somehow make us happier. But it turns out, AI actually makes work more intense than it simplifies things.
AI agents can get super complex these days! And companies are incentivizing teams to use increasingly more complex agents to get things done. Rather than just getting things done, employees are toggling between more windows, trying to get the agents to align with each other and work together in a super complex but somehow (hopefully?) more cohesive way.
To no one’s surprise, these multi-agent, multi-window AI infrastructures are leading to too much multitasking. I don’t care who you are and how much you think you can multitask, the brain has an upper limit for attention. We simply do not (and shouldn’t) have the computing power of a machine.
The Mental Fatigue of AI Use
Workers are pushed to the limits with all the demands for AI integration into their day-to-day life, and they’re complaining of mental fatigue. They end up exhausted from managing the work, not the work itself (which used to be done by humans!). Yeah, you think?
While some studies show that use of AI for repetitive tasks can help relieve exhaustion, other studies completely contradict this and find that AI actually makes burnout worse!
A 2026 Harvard study of 1,488 full-time workers based here in the US (48% male and 51% female; 58% independent contributors and 41% leaders), found that the mental exhaustion from juggling AI agents is too significant to ignore. Researchers are calling this “AI brain fry” which they say is “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity.” (Harvard Business Review, March 2026)
Symptoms of AI brain fry include:
A “buzzing” feeling that sounds like nervous system dysregulation to me
Mental fog
Difficulty focusing
Slower decision-making
Headaches
Increased errors
Decision fatigue
Intentions of quitting your job
Sounds like burnout to me!
Interestingly, the team of researchers found that when AI was used to replace menial tasks, burnout scores were lower, but mental fatigue scores weren’t.
What Does AI Brain Fry have to do with Burnout?
Based on my research and practical experience with my clients, mental fatigue easily moves to burnout if not managed.
My work takes burnout from the workplace and looks at it in the context of everyday life. I can’t help but draw connections between AI brain fry in a corporate setting and the very real drawbacks to using AI as an individual.
Yes, AI seems to be everywhere. But, we still have the option to use our brains rather than outsource it all to AI. For instance, there’s still value in Googling a question and scrolling past the AI response and finding an article on the subject — even one that’s an opinion article!
One of my greatest concerns with AI (beyond the very real environmental impacts) is the homogenization of ideas. When AI pulls the more agreed upon responses for information, rather than a wide range of perspectives, we’re just entering another kind of echo chamber. And truly, online echo chambers are what got us in this mess in the first place.
When we accept, even passively, that there’s only one answer to a question, we lose some of our soul in the process. We lose the creative expression and exploration of other possibilities. And that, from my research, contributes to spiritual and energetic burnout. Nobody’s got time for that!
What do you think? Have you experienced AI brain fry?
BTW: This article was written by me, a human! And yes, I used an em dash. That’s just good writing. xoxo, Megan