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Lakshmi Varanasi
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- Relying on AI can make you more efficient up to a point, a new study found.
- It can then tax you emotionally, leaving you exhausted and overwhelmed.
- The author says this sort of "AI brain fry" is probably here to stay for a while.
As artificial intelligence tools become embedded in everyday work, consultants are starting to worry about a cognitive side effect: People relying on them so heavily that their own thinking begins to splinter.
Julie Bedard, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group and a coauthor of a recent study on the topic, said on the tech podcast Hard Fork on Friday that she's "quite pessimistic" that humans will overcome the AI-induced phenomenon she called "brain fry" anytime soon.
Bedard and her colleagues explored the phenomenon in a study published earlier this month in the Harvard Business Review, which surveyed 1,488 full-time US workers at large companies across a range of industries.
The researchers found that 14% of workers reported experiencing symptoms such as mental fog, headaches, and slower decision-making — what the authors describe as "AI brain fry." Rates were higher in fields such as marketing, human resources, operations, and software engineering than in industries such as legal and compliance.
Bedard said on Hard Fork that this form of mental fatigue is distinct from traditional workplace burnout. Instead, it stems from the unusually high cognitive load required to supervise AI systems and evaluate their outputs.
"Burnout is physical and mental exhaustion. It's more emotional. It's more about how I feel about work, and do I feel like I'm doing a good job at work," she said.
Bedard said that she and her fellow researchers did not find a correlation between brain fry and burnout. In fact, AI can even be used to mitigate the symptoms of burnout, Bedard said.
As more jobs shift toward managing AI agents rather than completing tasks directly, however, workers must constantly review outputs, verify information, and decide how to use the results — a process that can require intense concentration.
The study found that AI tools can boost productivity, but only up to a point. Workers who moved from using one AI tool to two saw a noticeable jump in productivity. The gains shrank when employees added a third tool, and productivity began to decline as they juggled more systems.
Matthew Kropp, another coauthor of the study and a BCG managing director, described the trend as an early warning sign.
"We look at this as kind of the canary in the coal mine," Kropp previously told Business Insider, noting that engineers and other early adopters who manage multiple AI agents are among the first to experience the effects.
Still, the researchers emphasized that the problem isn't AI adoption itself. When AI replaces routine or repetitive tasks, the study found that burnout can actually decline — even if some workers still report mental fatigue.
For now, Bedard said companies should actively seek employees' feedback when integrating AI into teams.
"I do think that having some of the energy and ideas come from the quote-unquote bottom — from the actual workers doing the individual contribution — seems to matter," she said.
