The Exhaustion of Talking to a Tool

LLMs are cognitively exhausting because they demand social energy — the same mental effort we use when interacting with people — without delivering the reciprocal rewards of human interaction like learning, challenge, or inspiration. Unlike traditional tools that become extensions of the body through consistency and speed, LLMs require negotiation and persuasion but mostly return more code, more tests, and more excuses. The author questions whether the social brainwork spent on LLMs would be better directed at real colleagues.