The Mental Health Crisis No One Is talking About

Dr. Courtney Telinski: As you can imagine, it's a variable reward system, which is more like a slot machine, right? Where sometimes you're getting a reward, but most of the time you're not. Right? And And there's this like anticipation build-up that keeps you motivated to continue to press that lever. And that's really what AI is doing because there's this chance that it's going to give you a really perfect solution for what it is that you're looking for, but most of the time it's not going to be perfect. And so, there's this concept of, "Well, let me just do it one more time. Let me just do it one more time." And that keeps you hooked because your motivation is to get that perfect solution, and that in turn induces dopamine, which feeds this addictive cycle.

Miranda Heath: So, instead of spending more time coding, you're spending more time reviewing things, making decisions. You're taking on more responsibility. And also, people experience reporting experiencing a lot of pressure to do more quicker just because AI makes this possible. And maybe you have managers who don't really understand your work in practice, but they think AI is a magic bullet and they expect your capacity to be greater and for you to be able to ship more just because now you're using AI tools.

Scott Tolinski: We asked developers, do you feel like your actual coding skills are sharpening, holding steady, or diminishing? 59% put their own skills on the diminishing side of things. As well as how much genuine enjoyment or flow do you get from coding now compared to before you started using AI heavily? 54% said they get less enjoyment out of coding than they used to. And those two things aren't separate findings, by the way. In the data, it's mostly the same people. The ones who felt like their skills were slipping were the ones enjoying it the least.

Scott Tolinski: So, individual limits, they only really come into play if the systems around you allow you to even stop working in the first place. So, before maximum output 24/7 all the time becomes the baseline for you, we need to figure out what healthy AI assisted workflows actually look like in our lives.