February 8, 2026
One more prompt, zero chill
AI fatigue Is real and nobody talks about it
Faster at work, fried at home: devs say AI is draining
TLDR: An AI engineer says task speedups made work explode and turned him into a drained reviewer, not a creator. The community split: some admit late‑night “one more prompt” burnout, while others say just ignore it—highlighting a fight over boundaries, expectations, and the real mental cost of AI.
An engineer who builds serious AI tools says he’s shipping more code than ever—but feels totally wiped. His take: artificial intelligence (AI) speeds up tasks, then piles on more of them. You end up reviewing bot output all day, making tiny decisions nonstop. Creating feels energizing; constant judging feels soul-sucking. The crowd didn’t hold back. Author sidk24 insists this isn’t anti‑AI—just calling out the hidden mental tax. Meanwhile, simonw confesses the late‑night “just one more prompt” spiral and says decades of healthy work habits have been torpedoed. That struck a nerve: people nodded hard at the idea that faster work became more work, and the human brain pays the coordination bill. Then the snark squad arrived. layer8 joked, “There’d be less AI fatigue if we stopped talking about AI,” while dankobgd shrugged, “I just ignore it.” And psychoslave turned it into a meme: even their imaginary dog won’t shut up about AI. The drama? A split between the exhausted “reviewer class” and the “just turn it off” minimalists. The vibe: this isn’t a tools problem, it’s a boundaries problem—managers raising expectations, brains melting from context‑switching, and a weekly churn of new tools that nobody can keep up with. The post lands like a group therapy session with punchlines.
Key Points
- •AI-assisted tasks become faster, but overall workload expands as expectations rise.
- •Human cognitive costs increase due to more coordination, review, and decision-making.
- •The engineer’s role shifts from creating to continuously reviewing AI-generated outputs.
- •Context switching across multiple problems in a day leads to heightened exhaustion.
- •Evaluative work induces decision fatigue, illustrated by difficulty making simple choices midweek.