This has been brewing for a while.
The term AI burnout has been thrown around lately, usually referring to engineers exhausted by the gold rush or executives scrambling to catch up. But what I’ve been feeling is quieter, more personal. It isn’t about the pace of change. It’s about what’s being lost in the process: the satisfaction of the journey, the depth of engagement, the shape of thinking that used to emerge over time.
It started, like many things do these days, with a magical little productivity tool.
I got hooked on Fathom the first time I used it. A tool that records your video meetings and generates perfectly timed transcripts and summaries. Even if the meeting is unstructured and includes small talk, the summaries are crystal clear and usually factually correct. Working from home since 2007, I spend a lot of time in calls, and Fathom was an immediate game-changer. No more frantic note-taking. No more sorry, can you repeat that? Just a full, searchable memory of the conversation, created automatically.
At first, it felt like a miracle. Then it started to feel like something else.
Because once you know every word will be captured, you start showing up differently. I found myself drifting in meetings. I’d tune out, confident I could always check the transcript later. But of course, I rarely did. The space Fathom promised me, the time I thought I’d get back, was quickly filled by something else. More meetings. More tasks. More… efficiency.
And it wasn’t just Fathom.
I’ve always considered myself a quick learner. In school, at conferences, I’d often get the point early and mentally fast-forward. That impatience used to be a gift: it meant I could skim ahead, intuit structure, and anticipate questions. But it came with a risk; if I tuned out too soon, I’d miss the part where understanding deepens.
AI has turned that twitch into a full-time feature.
Tasks that once took hours of reading, listening, and analysing now take minutes. Summarise this paper. Extract key themes from that call. Draft a first version of the article. Synthesise the comments. Done. Done. Done.
And I start to feel like I’m the one being summarised.
The depth of engagement that used to build slowly, across a day or week of research, has been compressed into something instant. Understanding becomes transactional—insight, a screenshot. There’s no time for the cognitive climb, just the helicopter drop at the summit.
There was joy in the climb.
During an executive MBA a few years ago, I did one of those elaborate personality assessments. I’d always assumed I was an innovator. But the results surprised me. It turned out I was more of a journeyman. Not in the apprentice sense, but in the original meaning: someone motivated by the journey itself. I like understanding things by moving through them. Innovation, for me, has always been situational: a necessary tool when the road ahead becomes unclear. But what drives me is the discovery, not the shortcut.
AI removes the road.
No, I’m not a Luddite. I love technology. I’ve spent a career helping others understand and apply it. But I’m also a child of the first environmental wave, someone who’s always wrestled with the tension between loving what tech makes possible and fearing what it accelerates.
Transportation collapsed physical space. The internet collapsed communication time. AI, I now realise, is collapsing my mental space. It’s not just that it helps me reach answers faster; it’s that it flattens the terrain along the way.
And with that flattening, something is lost.
Clients now expect deliverables in less time, for less money. “Can’t AI do most of the work?” they ask. And it can, in the same way that GPS can tell you the shortest path through a city you’ve never seen. But what you lose are the landmarks, the detours, the smell of the place.
You can’t outsource experience.
The burnout I feel isn’t from overwork. It’s from under-engagement. It’s the hollowing out of work that used to feel meaningful. A creeping numbness where curiosity once lived. A sense that the cognitive soil has been over-tilled. No time for roots.
And yet, I still believe in Progress, with a capital P. I believe we can build systems that honour both efficiency and experience. I believe AI can be a tool, not a treadmill.
We must fight for the journey.
Maybe that means slowing down and taking the long way. I’m leaving some meetings unrecorded. Writing more first drafts myself, not because AI couldn’t do it faster, but because thinking is worth doing at human speed.
Because when the road is gone, the traveller disappears too.
Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse, August 7, 2025.
This article is part of a series on AI and sustainability. Also read: When Awareness Isn’t Enough: Sustainability Lessons for AI