AI is making us faster, more productive, and worse at thinking

Despite massive investment and relentless adoption pressure, AI's productivity gains are narrow and largely unproven at the economy-wide level. Goldman Sachs found no meaningful relationship between AI adoption and productivity broadly, with measurable gains limited to customer support and software development. Meanwhile, research shows AI is intensifying workloads rather than reducing them, creating 'workload creep' and a phenomenon dubbed 'AI brain fry' — cognitive fatigue, mental fog, and burnout disproportionately affecting entry-level workers and enthusiastic adopters. The piece argues that the term 'artificial intelligence' is doing more marketing than science, and that the frenzy of adoption may be eroding the conditions under which genuine human thinking thrives: sustained attention, tolerance for ambiguity, and space for deliberation.