From workspaces to classrooms, AI burnout grips Guwahati’s creative minds

As AI speeds up tasks, Guwahati’s human workers grapple with pressure, sameness, and silent exhaustion;

Update: 2025-07-22 06:26 GMT
From workspaces to classrooms, AI burnout grips Guwahati’s creative minds

This growing digital dependency is part of a broader issue affecting human cognition. (Representational image)

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Artificial intelligence has seamlessly embedded itself into our daily lives. It writes our emails, manages our schedules, offers virtual therapy, and even recommends what food we should try next. However, alongside this integration, a new phenomenon is quietly taking shape – the AI burnout.

A paper - AI and the Perception of Workplace Stress in Employees – examining the psychological toll of AI integration highlights that AI-driven performance monitoring fosters a culture of constant surveillance, pushing employees to remain available beyond work hours and diminishing the boundary between human effort and machine output.

Dr Mythili Hazarika, Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at GMCH, observes, “Constant preoccupation with AI-based apps or technologies leads to cognitive overload, mental exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and deficits in executive functions, all of which impair work performance.”

A 2024 Upwork survey of 2,500 knowledge workers in the US and UK revealed that while 96% of executives expect AI to boost productivity, 81% also reported increased demands on their subordinates.

Meanwhile, 77% of workers said AI has actually reduced their productivity and increased their workload. Nearly half (47%) admitted they’re unsure how to meet employer expectations.

Speed over substance

The unrealistic pressure to work as efficiently as tireless machines is affecting employees across various sectors.

A customer service executive in Guwahati, working for a major food delivery app, shared, “We’re expected to supervise bots in real time while also managing AI-generated responses. The pressure to match their speed and precision is overwhelming. AI helps me finish work faster, but the expectations have grown exponentially.”

Start-ups and freelancers, especially those chasing rapid growth, are particularly vulnerable. Omar Siddique, a senior graphic designer from Guwahati, said, “There’s intense competition; I use AI to work faster — not because I want to, but because if I don’t, I’ll fall behind.”

Jyoti Mitthal, brand manager at a Guwahati-based marketing agency, notes, “The fast-paced AI trend is overshadowing the value of slow, thoughtful, and original ideas.

Overdependence on AI has created uniformity in creative outputs. Similar prompts yield similar results across brands, industries, and cities.”

This dependency has also diminished traditional brainstorming processes. Content writer Karan Kumar Das adds, “If we let AI think and write for us, we risk becoming passive observers rather than active creators.”

Students struggle for originality

Without formal guidelines, unchecked AI dependence is spreading, even among students. Today, many students now feel like co-pilots in their academic journey.

Abhishek Sarma, an IT student from Guwahati, said, “After months of using AI, I often feel drained editing generated content to meet academic standards. Everyone uses the same tools, so it’s hard to stand out.”

He adds, “It feels like cheating to rely on AI, but everyone does it, and it’s exhausting.”

Sarmishtha Padhan, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at RGU, calls it a silent epidemic.

“Students’ dependency on tools like ChatGPT is crippling their abilities. Brainstorming has declined, reading habits are vanishing, and even speaking skills are suffering. It’s a real threat,” she said.

This growing digital dependency is part of a broader issue affecting human cognition. Our brains were never designed to process such intense digital stimulation, which is evident in the growing obsession with health tracking, say experts.

Nikita Hazarika, a clinical psychologist in Guwahati, explains, “Over-monitoring health metrics can lead to anxiety. People tend to self-diagnose based on limited information, creating confusion and panic.”

From calorie tracking and water intake to sleep cycles and heart rate monitoring, many users are constantly evaluating their health. She warns, “If not used judiciously, these tools can fuel obsession and have negative psychological consequences.”

Dr Hazarika adds, “As we move forward in an AI-powered future, we must pause and reflect on how these tools are affecting our minds and behaviour.”

Thankfully, awareness is slowly growing. Concepts like “AI detox” and “AI-free hours” are gaining popularity, highlighting a need to declutter our minds and embrace mindfulness and empathy.

The solution isn’t to reject AI, but to rethink how we coexist with it, mindfully and intentionally.

By Vidhisha Basnet

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