It won't kill you, or humanity, to get off the AI upgrade treadmill

Why are we in such a hurry? Are we in a race? Where's the finish line? Are we in the lead? Far behind? I increasingly hear these questions about AI from people who feel a gritty sense of being unpleasantly overstimulated – like a three-year-old allowed to stay awake too long and now unable to sleep.

That feeling has become worse since last November when AI tools suddenly became "good enough" to be broadly useful.

A whole cohort of engineers – myself included – found themselves infused with manic energy, bursting with ideas on how to prompt up tools and processes with this wonderful new toy.

Usage exploded – as has revenue.

The AI firms, finally on a path to something vaguely suggestive of profitability, leaned in and increased their release cadence.

Every new model felt like Christmas.

We've had a lot of Christmases these past ten months or so.

Almost every engineer I know has accrued a massive "toy debt," unable to stop experimenting with more tools than any of us could ever hope to master across an entire career.

Each new model delivers a quick dopamine hit to users, but the high wears off and the slump arrives.

That's where we are now.

Engineers feel exhausted.

The race to "Super Intelligence" (whatever that is) left us with something else entirely: call it "stupor intelligence" – the feeling that we've absorbed more than we can digest.

More AI would just be pointless excess.

If that's the view from inside the AI bubble, how does it look on the outside? Not so great.