Happy Hump Day {{first_name | Toaster}} 🐪 ,

Automation was supposed to give us back our time. AI was supposed to clear the busywork. The future of work was supposed to feel lighter. Instead, a lot of us are feeling the AI fatigue not from using tools, but from work that no longer feels like it came from anyone.

Companies are adding “AI” to their services whether it materially changes the product or not. Every platform is racing to bolt AI onto its identity. There are rumours of OpenAI buying Pinterest. Google is rewriting search with AI summaries. LinkedIn is turning job posts, messages, and profiles into auto-generated content farms. Everything is being quietly rebranded as intelligent, predictive, or powered by something vaguely machine-shaped. Everywhere you look, something is being optimized, but is somehow less meaningful.

That hollow feeling people keep calling AI fatigue isn’t just about fear of robots taking jobs. We’re surrounded by outputs that look impressive but feel empty. We’re watching creativity turn into prompts and thinking turn into templates.

There’s also something quietly unsettling about being told that everything you do can be replicated in seconds. It messes with our identity and the very human desire to feel useful, original, and needed. AI doesn’t just replace tasks, it replaces friction. Friction is where care, judgment, craft, and pride tend to live. When everything becomes instant, and endlessly reproducible, it’s hard to feel connected to the work.

AI isn’t evil or useless, but we are being asked to adopt it everywhere, all at once, without any real conversation about what should stay human. If a tool can generate the deliverable, then taste, empathy, and ethics becomes harder to see, value, and pay for.

The answer isn’t to reject AI, but we need to be more intentional about where we use it and where we refuse to. Automation should support thinking, not replace it. Speed should free up depth, not eliminate it. Tools should give us leverage, not flatten us into sameness.

Meaning comes from choice, judgement, and having a point of view. That’s the work that doesn’t scale nicely, but it’s exactly the work we need to protect. The future belongs to people who know how to think, not just generate. Those who can hold nuance, ask better questions, and say no to efficiency when it costs them their values or their voice. If everything is automated, meaning becomes the differentiator.

Team Toast 🥂