My day job basically requires me to use LLMs (or, it is strongly encouraged) on the software that I develop. Now I understand why LLM fatigue and LLM burn-out happens. It is because you constantly have to babysit the LLM to keep it from screwing things up.
Babysitting is exhausting work. At one time in my life, as a 20-something-year-old, I was responsible for a group of 30 kids age 5 to 12. Every day I went home so drained that I could barely stay awake long enough to have dinner. I know from experience that school teachers perform some of the most labor-intensive work in the modern world.
It is what they call “emotional labor.” When other people are unable (as with kids) or unwilling (as with a lazy roommate) to live or play or work with you as a cooperative peer or team member, you essentially have to spend mental energy keeping an eye on them and making sure they aren’t doing something that is disruptive. That mental energy is a real energy cost, it really does consume calories and make you feel tired.
The worst part about it is that the LLM never really “learns.” Kids can learn to work and play with you. Lazy roommates can learn to live with you. But an LLM never really learns, and it keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. People who work with LLMs often end up keeping a directory of scripts they can deploy with a quick copy-paste so they can quickly re-explain something to an LLM. So the fatigue of watching over it and making sure the LLM doesn’t do something wrong is a constant emotional pressure, and it never gets better with age.
