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This Is Why We Only Get Busier

AI Burnout

5 min readJun 12, 2026
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“Do you think AI will help us find a better work-life balance?”

A student asked me this question a few weeks ago.

It was during an event aimed at helping students deal with the challenges of the future.

“I’m thinking a lot about the future and my career,” the student told me. “And your presentation made me think.”

The organizers had asked me to address two questions in my talk.

Is using AI in your studies cheating, or is it a skill?

The second was the question everyone seems to be asking these days.

Will AI replace jobs, or create new ones?

The consensus in the room was that these tools are becoming better very quickly. But they won’t simply replace humans. Not entirely. Not even in the professions that are most often mentioned in the media. Lawyers, consultants, accountants, journalists, software developers, and analysts.

And that is where the student’s question came in.

What if large language models don’t replace humans, but make them more productive? What if they become an extension of what people can do? Like the electronic calculator once did.

Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD
Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD

Written by Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD

A storyteller from a forgotten generation. Less interested in going viral than in writing something worth remembering.