"We found that the phenomenon described in these posts—cognitive exhaustion from intensive oversight of AI agents—is both real and significant. We call it “AI brain fry,” which we define as mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity."
— When Using AI Leads to Brain Fry
I had AI brain fry last week. I was managing ~5 worktrees at any given moment and shipping about 7 PRs per day on my best days.
I think this is a real thing. It felt like when I was a kid and I watched too much TV and then tried to go outside or be around people.
I also feel like my mind is dulling. Some of this may be due to some other life changes, or being a new dad. But I have a hunch my over-use of AI is a significant factor.
I certainly produce a lot more code, but I have lost depth of intuition for the systems I am building. I think it's because I am not designing and building the solutions anymore. I am used to developing a strong sense of where bugs will occour, where the bottlenecks will be, or how new features can come together in the future. I have lost that for the 2 systems I have agentically engineered.
This is concerning. I am not sure if this is the right trade off when quality is the goal.
For the next few weeks, I plan to slow down. I will do more of the coding and use AI only for research and specific, scoped tasks. I want to see if this solves the brain fry / loss of intuition.