2026年3月8日 / 美国东部时间下午1:57 / CBS新闻
人工智能的承诺很简单：让机器完成工作。然而，它可能正在制造一种新的麻烦——看管这些机器。《哈佛商业评论》发表的一项新研究表明，人工智能非但没有让工作更轻松，反而可能给一些员工带来研究人员所谓的”脑疲劳”。
研究人员调查了约1500名员工，发现那些在多个人工智能工具间频繁切换的人报告了更多的决策疲劳和更多的错误。约七分之一的员工表示，他们在工作中因处理人工智能工具而经历了精神疲劳。
“人工智能可以远远领先于我们，但我们的大脑还是昨天的大脑，”波士顿咨询集团董事总经理兼合伙人、该研究的作者朱莉·贝达德（Julie Bedard）表示。她告诉CBS新闻，这些发现是一个”早期预警信号”，表明围绕人工智能生产力的期望可能需要重新调整。
“人工智能在某些方面确实对工作很有帮助。但在其他方面，它让我们在工作方式上不得不暂停思考，”贝达德说。”具体来说，对人工智能的密集监督会导致大量的认知疲劳。”
生产力悖论
研究发现了一个惊人的悖论：人工智能既能减少职业倦怠，又能引发职业倦怠。
当员工必须不断监督多个人工智能系统或同时处理多个工具时，精神压力急剧增加。相比之下，当员工使用人工智能实际卸下重复性任务时，他们的压力水平会下降。
贝达德解释说，人工智能”确实让我们能够扩展我们的能力，基本上是扩展我们的工作量和工作中的责任范围”，而这种能力的扩展可能很快就会让人不堪重负。
“人工智能脑疲劳会导致大量的精神疲劳，所以我们觉得这些任务超出了我们大脑的处理能力，”她说。
脑疲劳的感受
对于那些深度使用人工智能工具的人来说，”脑疲劳”的概念引起了共鸣。
“通常在忙碌一天后，我会感到一种以前在没有人工智能的正常工作日不会有的疲惫，”韦伯斯特·帕斯咨询公司战略、运营和产品主管杰克·唐尼（Jack Downey）表示。他每天使用人工智能来构建自动化系统，发现人工智能工作流程带来了额外的精神压力。
“你会一直等待……并且不断切换工作模式，”他说。”它工作得很快，但还不够快到能瞬间完成。所以一个任务可能需要5秒，另一个需要50秒，还有一个需要5分钟。”唐尼说，他通常会同时打开多个窗口来处理项目的不同部分。
虽然这项技术扩展了员工的工作能力，但也扩大了对他们的期望，即使这种期望是内部驱动的。
“人工智能的能力是无限的，很难说’不’并停止追求下一个你想要的改进，”唐尼说。”作为一个完美主义者，这往往会导致不知道何时停止。因为下一个更好的选择是可能的，所以你最终往往会花更多时间编写完美的工作流程并告诉人工智能该怎么做。”
唐尼表示，为自己和人工智能设定截止日期有助于限制脑疲劳并产出更好的产品。
企业为何应关注这一现象
多年来，许多关于人工智能的预测表明，这项技术将允许更少的员工更快地完成更多工作。但贝达德表示，如果人工智能已经让员工面临认知过载，企业可能需要重新思考这些假设。
“我们需要重新设计我们的工作方式……而不是仅仅在昨天的工作基础上叠加人工智能，”她说。
研究发现，领导力和培训可能发挥关键作用。那些管理者有意使用人工智能的员工，脑疲劳更少。
如果企业不解决这个问题，他们的利润底线可能会受到影响。经历人工智能脑疲劳的员工报告了更多的错误、决策速度变慢和更高的疲劳感。贝达德明确表示，解决方案不是放弃人工智能，而是在人工智能革命加速的情况下重新思考人类员工如何最好地与这些工具互动。
人工智能的潜力是无限的。问题在于人类的大脑能在多大程度上跟上它的步伐。
Is AI productivity prompting burnout? Study finds new pattern of “AI brain fry”
March 8, 2026 / 1:57 PM EDT / CBS News
The promise of artificial intelligence has been simple: let the machines do the work. Instead, it may be creating a new headache from babysitting the machines. A new study published in Harvard Business Review suggests that instead of making work easier, AI may be giving some workers what researchers are calling “brain fry.”
Researchers surveyed about 1,500 workers and found that people constantly bouncing between multiple AI tools reported more decision fatigue and more errors. About one in seven workers said they had experienced mental fatigue from juggling AI tools at work.
“The AI can run out far ahead of us, but we’re still here with the same brain we had yesterday,” said Julie Bedard, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group and an author of the study. She told CBS News the findings are an “early warning sign” that expectations around AI productivity may need recalibrating.
“AI is really good in some ways for work. And in other ways, it gives us pause in how we do our work,” Bedard said. “Specifically, there are ways in which intensive oversight of AI causes a lot of sort of cognitive, just exhaustion.”
The productivity paradox
The study found a striking paradox: AI can both reduce burnout and create it.
When workers had to constantly supervise multiple AI systems or juggle several tools at once, mental strain increased sharply. By contrast, when workers used AI to actually offload repetitive tasks, their stress levels dropped.
Bedard explained that AI “allows us to really extend our capabilities, basically extending our workload and our sphere of accountability at work,” and that expansion of capability can quickly become overwhelming.
“AI brain fry causes a lot of mental fatigue so we feel like it’s beyond our brain’s capability to handle those tasks,” she said.
What it feels like
For people working deeply with AI tools, the concept of “brain fry” resonates.
“There’s a point that usually happens after a full day where I just kind of feel exhausted in a way that I didn’t feel in a normal work day before AI,” said Jack Downey, Head of Strategy, Operations and Product at Webster Pass Consulting. He uses AI daily to build automation systems and finds there is an additional mental strain that comes from AI workflows.
“You’re constantly waiting… and you’re changing gears,” he said. “It works so quickly, but not quite quickly enough that it happens instantaneously. And so it might take five seconds to do one task, 50 seconds to do another task, and five minutes to do another task.” Downey said he usually has several different windows open to work on multiple parts of a project at the same time.
While the technology expands what workers can do, it also expands what they’re expected to do, even if that expectation is internally driven.
“The capacity of AI is so endless that it can be really hard to just say no and stop whatever the next improvement is that you want,” Downey said. “As a perfectionist, that often can result in not knowing when to stop. The next best thing is possible, so, often, you end up spending more time writing the perfect workflow and telling AI what to do.”
Downey said he finds that setting deadlines for himself and his AI helps to limit the fry and produce a better product.
Why businesses should pay attention
For years, many predictions about artificial intelligence suggested the technology would allow fewer workers to do more work faster. But if AI is already pushing workers toward cognitive overload, organizations may need to rethink those assumptions, Bedard said.
“We need to redesign how we do our work… where we don’t just keep exactly what we did yesterday and put AI on the top of it,” she said.
The study found that leadership and training could play a critical role. Less brain fry was seen among employees whose managers were intentional with their AI use.
If businesses don’t figure that out, their bottom lines may suffer. Workers experiencing AI brain fry reported more mistakes, slower decision-making, and higher fatigue. Bedard is clear that the solution is not abandoning AI, but rethinking how human workers best interact with these tools as the AI revolution accelerates.
The promise of AI may be limitless. The question is how far the human brain can stretch to keep up.
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