THE new sunday express Voices Devdutt Pattanaik Neha Sinha Ravi Shankar Ajai Sahni Dr Deepali Bhardwaj Mata Amritanandamayi MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment july 5 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 Bheja Fry The compulsive use of AI in study, work, and play has created a new kind of exhaustion that is reshaping how the brain focuses, remembers, and thinks to our detriment M By Anjali Awasthi any newbies in the world of Artificial Intelligence presume AI is supposed to make work easier. For Karishma Pramanik, a digital marketer in Delhi, it did. Until it didn’t. She recalls when ChatGPT was simply an extra pair of eyes. She would paste an important email on it to catch the occasional typo or smoothen an awkward sentence. Soon, she began to upload PPTs. Then articles to rewrite and even write. Before long, almost every piece of her work was processed by an AI chatbot before it reached another human. The shift was so gradual she barely noticed it. What she did notice, eventually was harder to , explain. “Initially I used AI to catch grammar mistakes and polish my writing,” she says. “But over time, I found myself checking stuff I would never have questioned before. Even when I knew it was right, I wanted AI to confirm it. I was experiencing severe burnout not from writing but from constantly seeking reassurance from a bot. At some point, I stopped trusting my own judgment. I realised I was burned out by answers.” The shape of the crisis is almost philosophical. Humans built machines to do more of the thinking so that we might have more room to be human: to reflect, create, connect, rest. Instead, we have placed ourselves in the loop of machines that never rest, demanding that we match their pace, verify their work, and keep them calibrated. We have made ourselves the quality-control department for an intelligence that does not tire. Hundreds of kilometres away from Delhi, in Jaipur, first-year school teacher Navya Bhatnagar found herself facing a different version of the same dilemma. She had entered the profession hoping to develop her own teaching style, experimenting with lesson plans and discovering what worked in her classroom and what didn’t. Instead, almost every lesson of hers began making a detour through AI. It certainly saved her time, but it also left her wondering whether she was relying on AI because it genuinely improved her work or because she had stopped trusting her instincts. The questions from her students only made that uncertainty louder. “They ask me, ‘Ma’am, how will we stay relevant if AI can do everything?’ AI burnout isn’t just about using new tools. It’s the constant pressure to keep up while wondering if you’re still enough.” Kerala-based researchers at Marian College Kuttikkanam, published in Frontiers in Psychology (April 2025), which examines AI’s impact in educational settings explored “the cognitive paradox of AI in education: between enhancement and erosion”. It argues that while AI-based adaptive learning systems can improve outcomes, they simultaneously question cognitive development, particularly in critical thinking, problem-solving, and autonomous learning. The resonance with workplace dynamics is unmistakable. There is a Fear Economy at Work A Boston Consulting Group study titled Four Keys to Boosting Inclusion and Beating Burnout found that 58 per cent of India’s workforce is burnt out: 10 per cent worse than the global average of 48 per cent. Australia trailed at 53 per cent; Japan and Germany registered significantly lower rates. India did not have a burnout problem when AI arrived. The first and most documented dimension of AI-related distress in India is not AI burnout, but the worker’s chronic anticipatory anxiety that fears being replaced by it. In an IIM Ahmedabad study of white-collar workers, 55 per cent have adopted must adopt the tools they fear in order to protect themselves from those very tools. Psychologists have a name for what Indian IT workers are experiencing: technostress. A peer-reviewed study published in the International Journal of Indian Psychology found that negative perceptions of AI around job insecurity and task complexity were directly associated with higher stress levels across IT, finance, and education sectors. India’s IT sector shed between 25,000 and 30,000 positions in 2025, with companies citing AI-driven realignment. The emotional toll of the AI transition in India is registering most acutely among younger workers. A 2024 Emotional Wellness State of Employees Report from the wellness platform YourDOST found that 64 per cent of employees aged 21 to 30 are battling high stress levels; a 31 per cent year-on-year increase. Among women, it is 72.2 per cent. India’s Corporate Health Study (2026) found, only 11 per cent of organisations use predictive analytics to monitor workforce health, and the concept of Technostress The pressure to constantly adapt to new AI tools, notifications, and digital workflows can trigger chronic stress and fatigue cortisol spike overload Persistent digital and work-related AI demands may contribute to keeping cortisol—the body’s primary stress hormone—higher than normal AI tools; 48 per cent have received some training, and a huge 68 per cent fear their jobs could be partially or fully automated within five years. A further 40 per cent believe their current skills will become redundant. Among millennials specifically a , report by Great Place To Work India found that nearly 49 per cent fear AI-driven job replacement, making it a persistent undercurrent in their working lives. Data released by Astrotalk in December 2025 revealed that career-related anxiety rose by 50 per cent in 2025, with “Is AI going to take my job?” becoming the single most common question on the platform. New surveys indicate that 96 per cent of Indian professionals use AI or generative AI tools in their work, and 94 per cent perceive that mastering these technologies is essential for career progression. Many of them, however, are deeply concerned about potential job displacement if they do not upskill fast enough. The result is a peculiar double bind: workers tracking ‘Psychological Safety Scores’ is largely aspirational. The infrastructure for addressing this crisis, in other words, is as underdeveloped as the crisis itself is developing exponentially . The Digital Wellbeing Gap is Fuelling Unhealthy Choices Now many Indian enterprises are accelerating AI adoption, cloud transformation, and hybrid work models. The average Indian employee already works 46.7 hours a week, significantly higher than the global ILO average. The new employment crisis worldwide is job loss to AI—both white and blue collar. The Indian IT office model is built on thousands of junior employees doing manual ‘grunt work’, to support the small top management. Now, systemic inefficiencies are being mended using AI. In April 2026 alone, Oracle, which has shifted much of its ops to AI, reportedly sacked 12,000 employees in India. TCS made 12,000 jobs redundant. Cognizant, Freshworks, and Cognitive saturation overloads Constant AI-assisted multitasking the brain, reducing its ability to process, prioritise, and retain information effectively SuperOps are choosing lean, mean teams driven by AI. But AI may not always have the right answer. Ford has rehired more than 300 veteran quality engineers after discovering that AI systems could not fully match the expertise and judgement of experienced human inspectors. The company said it had underestimated the value of seasoned engineers whose experience across multiple product cycles proved difficult to replicate with AI. But as most companies still move to AI, employment anxiety is on the rise. This is a cause for concern, given India’s mental health infrastructure is too thin. The corporate sector’s response is wellness apps and stipends; all of which global research has shown to be inadequate. In a survey-based study of 1,488 full-time US-located workers, researchers identified a phenomenon they labelled “ brain fry”. Its AI definition was the mental fatigue caused by excessive use of AI tools beyond the user’s cognitive capacity Some participants reported . a persistent mental fog, while their decisionmaking faculty slowed. Some even got persistent headaches. A Harvard Business Review study of nearly 1,500 full-time AI users found that AI burnout happens not just because of task volumes, but also the worker’s need to continuously evaluate, verify and refine , AI-generated outputs. This leaves them in a perennial state of cerebral engagement. Many workers confess they are mentally crowded despite having more tools to use at work than ever. They struggle to sustain attention, second-guess decisions they once made confidently; how they log into AI before attempting to find solutions on their own. At the same time, the rapid cycle of prompts and instant responses continually stimulates the brain’s reward system, particularly dopamine pathways, conditioning us to expect immediate feedback. Over time, this low-effort, high-frequency stimulation may make slower, effortful thinking feel unusually taxing. The end result is a brain that tires more quickly struggles , with uncertainty and increasingly seeks external validation. Add the low-level stress of constant digital engagement which can elevate cortisol levels: the more mentally fatigued we feel, the more we lean on AI, and the more difficult independent thinking seems. Digital Dependency is a Paradox Every prompt on an AI app promises clarity Every answer appears helpful. . Every shortcut seems to save time. Until one day the hardest question , isn’t what to ask AI. It’s whether you’ve forgotten how to trust your own answer. Take the case of Appurva Pandey 38, who lives in Mumbai and , spent more time planning her daughter’s life than actually experiencing it. At first she turned to AI for practical help, meal plans, weekend activities, sleep schedules, educational games. Suggestions kept coming. What began as convenience slowly turned into a habit. “ some point, I realised I was spending At more time improving my life than living it,” she says. That feeling sits at the heart of AI burnout. Not exhaustion from work, but the exhaustion from constant optimisation. Researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University say the more humans lean on AI to complete their tasks, the more their critical thinking abilities shrink. HR professional Ahana Walawalkar from Mumbai has lost count of the number of AI tools people tell her they’re trying to master. She interviews candidates across industries, and lately has , noticed a familiar anxiety creeping into almost every conversation. It isn’t that workers dislike technology or resist change. They are racing to learn every new chatbot, image generator, coding assistant and productivity app, terrified that missing the next breakthrough will make them unemployable. “They’re afraid that no matter how much they learn, it will never be enough. That’s AI burnout,” she says. Bengaluru-based software engineer Rohan MK and Mumbai-based marketing executive Priya Khanna say AI entered their workplaces as a productivity tool but quickly became an expectation. Today their workdays involve , switching between ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, image generators, and internal AI assistants, not just to complete tasks faster but to keep pace with the relentless stream of new tools. “Earlier, I was judged on how well I solved a problem. Now I’m expected to deliver in half the time because everyone assumes AI is doing the heavy lifting,” says Rohan. Khanna echoes the sentiment: “Every week there’s a new tool everyone says you must know. You feel guilty if you’re not using the latest one.” Both admit that instead of reducing mental effort, AI has created decision fatigue. The result, they say is , a growing sense of burnout and a nagging fear that constant dependence on AI may be dulling the very analytical and creative skills that made them valuable in the first place. Brains are being fried not just at work. The burnout of Mumbai-based Meeta Shukla, a 45-year-old chartered accountant, arrived much more quietly It began with her daughter, . Jwisha. Questions that once were discussed and debated at the dining table—about homework, science facts or random curiosities—now went straight to an AI app. Meeta admired Jwisha’s instinctive embrace of the technology “I’m proud of how naturally she . embraces technology but I also found myself , staying up late, reading about AI to keep up with her. It took me a while to realise I wasn't learning out of curiosity anymore; I was learning out of fear,” she says. AI burnout comes not from producing information, but from constantly processing it. Every prompt produces possibilities. Every answer comes with alternatives. Every recommendation invites another question. But the brain is no longer spending energy just Brain fog Excessive reliance on AI and prolonged screen time can leave users feeling mentally sluggish, unfocused, and less able to think clearly Turn to page 2