The True Cost of AI Coding  🔗 **Source:** [The True Cost of AI Coding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPUn1Fnfn0k) ## Highlights - when I approached burnout, it was preceded by very intense AI usage. So, I think I burned myself out through just late nights, couldn't hardly sleep. I was so excited to just get the next prompt. - Note: Adam Elmore's burnout case study -- 17-year developer, intense AI usage preceded a major crash. - 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... that in turn induces dopamine, which feeds this addictive cycle. - Note: Dr. Courtney Tolinski's core explanatory mechanism: compulsive AI prompting as slot-machine-style variable reward addiction. - Of the people who kept going past their stopping point, 58% said their sleep had changed since they started using AI heavily, moderately, or more. Of the people who actually stopped when they meant to, just 17. - Note: Strongest relationship in the survey: overshooting stop-time correlates with much worse sleep, explicitly caveated as correlational not causal. - 59% put their own skills on the diminishing side of things. - Note: Majority of surveyed developers feel their coding skills are diminishing from heavy AI use. - 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. - Note: Skill diminishment and reduced enjoyment are largely the same respondents -- a compounding effect, not two separate findings. - healthy prompting it can't be carried by personal discipline alone, right? The worker, the workplace, all of these things matter in which like stopping working on time is even possible. - Note: The video's real thesis: structural/workplace factors, not just individual willpower, determine whether healthy AI-coding boundaries are achievable.