Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

siddhantkhare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 334 posts

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#261

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

mikkupikku wrote: post #112
parpfish wrote: post #18

For me the fatigue is a little different— it’s the constant switching between doing a little bit of work/coding/reviewing and then stopping to wait for the llm to generate something. The waits are unpredictable length, so you never know if you should wait or switch to a new task. So you just do something to kill a little time while the machine thinks. You never get into a flow state and you feel worn down from this c…

I know this is a terribly irresponsible and immature suggestion, but what I've been doing is every time I give claude code a request of indeterminate length, I just hit a blunt and chill out. That and sometimes I'll tab into the kind of game that can be picked up and put down on very short notice, here's where I shameless plug for the free and open source game Endless Sky. For me personally, programming lost most of…

I can recommend a Steam Deck for gaming that can be easily interrupted and resumed. It also means that you can leave your "work" machine so that you can see when claude has finished.

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#262

Post by 93po »

4er_transform wrote: post #238

“You’re not imagining it. You’re not weak.” If “I get exhausted that I have to check in on my coding agent while it does my job” isn’t weak, what is? This has to be satire.

funnily that sentence is written very AI-ish. It's a really common pattern of "it's not x, it's y" and specifically the phrase "You're not imagining it"

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#263

Post by [deleted] »

Kiro wrote: post #248
dangus wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is your comment relevant to the article? My comment is relevant because I’m pointing out, like the article does, that AI isn’t turning out to be anywhere near as useful and low-friction as it has been promised. Hence, the fatigue. Your comment is the one that contributes nothing.

The article is talking about physical fatigue from being more productive. Your comment is about the "people are tired of the AI hype" type of fatigue.

[deleted]

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#264

Post by johnnyanmac »

swat535 wrote: post #255
mikkupikku wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a terribly irresponsible and immature suggestion, but what I've been doing is every time I give claude code a request of indeterminate length, I just hit a blunt and chill out. That and sometimes I'll tab into the kind of game that can be picked up and put down on very short notice, here's where I shameless plug for the free and open source game Endless Sky. For me personally, programming lost most of…

Programming stopped feeling fun for me once MBAs and bean counters took over. There's rarely time to write thoughtful code anymore. Even convincing management to invest in a sane architecture feels like an endless uphill battle. Engineer teams are nothing but an annoying expense on the balance sheet and the goal is to cram as many features, as quickly as possible to get the sale. That's exactly why I'm happy to use e…

It's still fun for me. But a lot of my day right now isn't "coding". But playing the job market game to get stability back in life while juggling other part time work.

Of course, I know the next layoff will come. So I simply want to use the next time of stability to make sure I can be that artisan the next time industry kicks me out. But baby steps for now.

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#265

Post by rubslopes »

thunfischtoast wrote: post #230
rubslopes wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to lose myself in focused work for hours. That's changed. Now I'm constantly pulled away, and I've noticed the pattern: I send a prompt, wait for the reply, and drift into browsing. Without SelfControl blocking me, I can't seem to resist. I am certainly more productive with LLMs, but I also feel much more tired (and guilty) after a day of work.

This has been a common pattern for me before LLMs, when my work required constantly rebuilding models or doing small deployments where each task/try took more than ~20ish seconds and less than say 3 minutes. It's enough to pull you out of it but not enough to make a proper break or switch tasks. I suffered from the problems you describe, grabbing a browser window or my phone which would usually take my attention much…

Thank you for this comment. I meditated almost daily for years, but somewhere along the way life got hectic and the habit slipped. Time to revisit it.

EDIT: I wanted to add that I think it's a great time to get back to it because this mental fatigue has been leading me to migrate to more analog tools, like pen and paper for journaling and ditching my smartwatch for analog ones.

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#266

Post by saltcured »

parpfish wrote: post #89
ericmcer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously and beyond productivity, flow state was what I liked most about the job. A cup of coffee and noise cancelling headphones and a 2 hour locked in session were when I felt most in love with programming.

I love the flow state, and I’m pretty sure it’s fundamentally incompatible with prompting. For me, when the flow state kicks in, it’s completely nonverbal and my inner dialogue shuts up. I think that’s part of why it feels so cool and fun when it hits. But LLM prompting requires you to constantly engage with language processing to summarize and review the problem.

As someone with no inner monologue, I think I could just as easily "flow" about a non-verbal task like spatial reasoning or a verbal task like reading, writing, or even engaging in a particularly technical or abstract conversation. Unlike you, my resting state is non-verbal and I would not be able to correlate verbal content with flow like that.

To me, flow is a mental analogue to the physical experience of peak athletic output. E.g. when you are are at or near your maximum cardiovascular throughput and everything is going to training and plan. It's not a perfect dichotomy. After all, athletics also involve a lot of mental effort, and they have more metabolic side-effects. I've never heard of anybody hitting their lactate threshold from intense thinking...

My point is that the peak mental output could be applied to many different modes of thought, just as your cardiovascular capacity can be applied to many different sports activities. A lot of analogies I hear seem too narrow, like they only accept one thinking task as flow state.

I also don't think it is easy to describe flow in terms of attention or focus. I think one can be in a flow state with a task that involves breadth or depth of attention. But, I do suspect there is some kind of fixed sum aspect to it. Being at peak flow is a kind of prioritization and tradeoff, where irrelevant cognitive tasks get excluded to devote more resources to the main task.

A person flowing on a deep task may seem to have a blindness to things outside their narrow focus. But I think others can flow in a way that lets them juggle many things, but instead having a blindness to the depth of some issues. Sometimes, I think many contemporary tech debates, including experience of AI tech, are due to different dispositions on this spectrum...

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#267

Post by ghthor »

gengstrand wrote: post #191
parpfish wrote: post #18

For me the fatigue is a little different— it’s the constant switching between doing a little bit of work/coding/reviewing and then stopping to wait for the llm to generate something. The waits are unpredictable length, so you never know if you should wait or switch to a new task. So you just do something to kill a little time while the machine thinks. You never get into a flow state and you feel worn down from this c…

That's a type of fatigue that is not new but I hear you, context switching fatigue has increased ten fold with the introduction of agentic AI coding tools. Here are some more types of fatigue that have been increased with the adoption of LLMs in writing code. There are plenty of articles on review fatigue including https://www.exploravention.com/blogs/soft_arch_agentic_ai/ which I published recently. The focus there…

Maybe this is why I’m different. I love reviewing code, it’s a great way to learn about a system, get new ideas. Diffs are great, see how things are interconnected

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#268

Post by yukinon »

parpfish wrote: post #89
ericmcer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously and beyond productivity, flow state was what I liked most about the job. A cup of coffee and noise cancelling headphones and a 2 hour locked in session were when I felt most in love with programming.

I love the flow state, and I’m pretty sure it’s fundamentally incompatible with prompting. For me, when the flow state kicks in, it’s completely nonverbal and my inner dialogue shuts up. I think that’s part of why it feels so cool and fun when it hits. But LLM prompting requires you to constantly engage with language processing to summarize and review the problem.

This really goes to show that everyone's 'flow state' is different.

My inner dialogue is always chatty; that doesn't stop when I enter a flow state. It just becomes far more laser focused and far less distracted. LLMs help to maintain the flow because I'm able to use it to automate anything I don't care about (e.g. config files) and troubleshoot with me quickly to keep the flow going.

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#269

Post by AstroBen »

xnx wrote: post #151
zkmon wrote: post #58

I said this a few times here. Tech is never to make the life easier for the worker. It is to make the worker more productive and product more competitive. Moving from horses to cars did not give you more free time. Moving from telephone to smartphone did not give more fishing time. You just became more mobile, more productive and more reachable.

How we use efficiency is a choice. It's possible to work a lot less if you accept quality of life from an older era (no phone, Netflix, etc.)

I think you're way over estimating the cost of a phone and Netflix. Even the latest iPhone pro max is going to cost you an amortized ~$20 a month or less. That's completely dwarfed by my housing, food, utility and other unavoidable expenses

Oh how I'd love to just use an old android with graphene os and work half the time. Unfortunately the math doesn't work

Re: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

#270

Post by johnnyanmac »

stack_framer wrote: post #194
mikkupikku wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a terribly irresponsible and immature suggestion, but what I've been doing is every time I give claude code a request of indeterminate length, I just hit a blunt and chill out. That and sometimes I'll tab into the kind of game that can be picked up and put down on very short notice, here's where I shameless plug for the free and open source game Endless Sky. For me personally, programming lost most of…

Wow, this is a new low I did not expect to see. "Just get high and you'll be able to code with an LLM." Preceded by, "I know it's terrible." I'm wholly unwilling to relinquish my health and my morals to "AI" so I can "ship faster." What a pathetic existence that would be.

Natural results when incentives are on "shippng" and not "quality". People find ways to ship out stuff faster. And perhaps drown their apprehensions about quality.
Post reply on HN