AI Cafe Conversations · 2026-04-03 · 9 min
Send us Fan Mail Sahar Andrade, MB.BCh, neuroscience-based leadership consultant and Forbes Coaches Council member, answers: Why are the employees who use AI most burning out first? Because heavy AI use floods the prefrontal cortex with decision demands while eliminating the natural recovery rhythms the nervous system needs to reset. The result is chronic sympathetic activation - a stress state that looks like performance but is actually depletion. In this episode we unpack what the UC Berkeley 8-month study found, why your best people are most at risk, and what leaders can do about it. You told your team to adopt AI. Your best people did. They learned the tools, built the workflows, stayed late to optimize. Now they are crashing. A UC Berkeley 8-month study found that frequent AI users experience 45% higher burnout rates. Not the resistors. The champions. In this episode, Sahar Andrade - neuroscience-based leadership consultant and Forbes Coaches Council member - explains what is actually happening in the brains of your highest-performing AI users. This is not a motivation problem. It is a nervous system problem.
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