{"id":337839,"date":"2026-03-19T18:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337839\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T18:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:35:08","slug":"how-businesses-can-navigate-ai-fatigue-unite-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/337839\/","title":{"rendered":"How Businesses Can Navigate AI Fatigue \u2013 Unite.AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite news of heavyweight tech investments<\/a>, AI is hitting major roadblocks. From companies like Dell toning down AI language at CES 2026<\/a>, to reports finding that two-thirds of consumers do not want AI on their devices. Internally, things in-house are not doing so well for workers either. A recent Harvard study found that AI tools didn\u2019t reduce work, instead they consistently intensified it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These events and trends are all part of a broader wave, impacting markets, businesses, and consumers. AI Fatigue is real, and ignoring it is a risky roll of the dice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI Accelerates Work Rate But Leads to Fatigue, Impacts Quality, and Weakens Decisions<\/p>\n

On February 9, Harvard Business Review<\/a> reported the findings of an eight-month study on how AI changed work habits. The study found that while AI accelerated the pace of work, it also led to cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. This in turn, led to lower quality of work, turnover, and other problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere we turn today, we are surrounded by AI discussion and questions,\u201d Jenny Sagstr\u00f6m<\/a>, founder and CEO of the B2B creative agency Sk\u00f6na<\/a>, told us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sagstr\u00f6m, who has worked for the past 20 years in the world of B2B tech branding and is currently working with companies like Snowflake, Cloudflare, and Witness.ai, said that while AI has introduced countless improvements to the workplace, it is also driving AI fatigue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re constantly badgered with questions and comments about how to best \u2014 and how not \u2014 to use AI. So, yes, I believe AI fatigue is real,\u201d said Sagstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI can probably write better than I can, but unless I sit down and actually write myself, I won\u2019t go through the thinking process of determining what my stance is,\u201d she added<\/p>\n

The Cost of the Never-ending Digital Transformation<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile AI fatigue is very real, it\u2019s indicative of a broader issue impacting the workforce: transformation fatigue,\u201d Fredrik Hagstroem<\/a>, CTO of Emergn<\/a>, a tech consultancy firm, told us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Transformation fatigue is a type of burnout workers experience from too many change initiatives happening too quickly and for too long, said Hagstroem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom cloud computing and IoT to big data, machine learning, and now AI, the workforce has endured numerous transformations over the past 10 to 15 years \u2014 oftentimes with unclear results,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emergn\u2019s own research found that 50% of employees<\/a> have experienced transformation fatigue driven by frequent changes and transformations. More than half (61%) of U.S.-based CEOs recognized that transformation fatigue is a growing concern with the rise of AI.<\/p>\n

An essay picked up by Business Insider<\/a> and written by AI software engineer and developer Siddhant Khare gives us an inside look on what the AI transformation looks like at the individual level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Khare, who develops and engineers advanced AI systems, wrote in the essay that AI fatigue is \u201cthe kind of exhaustion that no amount of tooling or workflow optimization could fix.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI shipped more code last quarter than any quarter in my career,\u201d said Khare. \u201cI also felt more drained than any quarter in my career. These two facts are not unrelated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two-thirds of Consumers Say They Don\u2019t Want, Need, or Will Pay for AI<\/p>\n

From the consumer\u2019s point of view, AI has also lost its shine, with studies saying that most users do not want AI. A January 27, 2026 Circana<\/a> report found that about 7 out of 10 consumers do not want AI on their device. The study revealed that many consumers feel they simply do not need the technology. Additionally, 59% of those who do not want AI have privacy concerns, and 43% said they do not want to pay extra for AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWorkers and consumers are still immersed in lots of hype around new foundation model releases,\u201d Mike Hulbert<\/a>, CEO of Solvd<\/a>, an AI engineering company, told us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Studies show that increasingly more consumers use chatbots to varying degrees to research and answer questions in daily life. From the perspective of these use cases, the capabilities appear to have plateaued, said Hulbert\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who regularly makes architectural decisions and is involved in implementing AI, I see it as a gap between what people expect and what they actually get,\u201d Philip Tikhanovich<\/a>, Head of Big Data Engineering Department at Innowise<\/a>, a software development company, told us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of products on the market where AI has been added just for the sake of it, and people have to figure out how to use a new button or scenario (many of which don\u2019t really make things easier),\u201d said Tikhanovich.<\/p>\n

As a result, consumers lose trust and become banner-blind to any AI features, even useful ones. \u201cWithin companies, it often leads to exhaustion and irritation among teams,\u201d said Tikhanovich.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of the promised acceleration, they have to double-check results, switch between tools, and learn how to use half-baked features\u201d.<\/p>\n

Business Leaders and Investors Have Their Own View on AI Fatigue and How to Mitigate It<\/p>\n

On February 5, Wall Street closed sharply low, as AI worries took over investors\u2019 confidence. The Nasdaq fell<\/a> to its lowest since November, driven by losses in Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon (AMZN.O), and other big tech heavyweights, after Alphabet (GOOGL.O), said it could double capital spending on AI. What worries investors is that more big tech spending is expected to significantly impact free cash flow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Executives are also doubling down on AI spending. A recent annual survey from Teneo<\/a> found that more than two-thirds (68%) of CEOs are doubling down on AI investments in 2026, even when most of their AI projects are not profitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that AI fatigue is real for workers and consumers, but not so much for business leaders,\u201d Hulbert said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Hulbert, much of the fatigue is being driven by what people hear outside of work versus what they hear at work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For this reason, leaders need to communicate authentically about what is and isn\u2019t working in their AI initiatives, provide staff tangible opportunities to participate in evolving their work, and begin to also focus on the opportunity to reduce external spend (vs only productivity), he advised.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPlatitudes are really counterproductive \u2013 messages need to be framed by specific challenges in a company and how AI is helping to tackle those challenges,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tikhanovich said companies can start out with an \u201ceasy one\u201d to reduce AI fatigue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of AI-first, switch to utility-first (i.e., only use technology where it really saves time or reduces friction),\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Training teams and building AI in a way that doesn\u2019t require extra steps and always gives people a choice, including being able to turn it off or fall back to the old workflow, is the way to go, according to Tikhanovich.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA value audit is also critical \u2026 I suggest regularly reviewing AI features \u2014 keep only what actually saves time.\u201d<\/p>\n

With market analysts still crunching numbers and undecided on the AI bubble, big tech and businesses announcing big AI investments \u2014 even if most AI projects do not bring in revenue, and reports showing that consumers and workers are hitting an AI fatigue wall \u2014 experts agree that steps need to be taken.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From transparency to building trust, empowering workers, and deploying only the features that work, business leaders need to step up to avoid the traps of AI fatigue.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite news of heavyweight tech investments, AI is hitting major roadblocks. From companies like Dell toning down AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-337839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}