AI Is Making You Sick And Nobody Is Talking About It

The Epidemic is real - here's how to overcome it

There is a secret sickness going on in the AI space right now and nobody is talking about it. AI has been weaponized against you and I and it has been packaged in a Trojan horse - posing as something so virtuous and aspirational that you’d never suspect it was hurting you.

Feeling A Bit Off?

Do you know that feeling that you know something is wrong but you can't quite put your finger on it? This is how I felt recently standing in the Walgreens aisle staring at a wall of Neosporin options.

Bear with me for a moment - this will connect to AI and to the sickness that is spreading in the AI space and to you and me right now.

So I'm the type of Amazon prime user who loves the experience of "I know what I need" and Amazon shows me the best choice in a stack-ranked list of results. I click buy and I'm done.

But a few days ago I had to go into an actual physical pharmacy. It's been years since I've done that. But this time I was out of town and my partner had sliced his finger with a sharp knife. So we dropped by a Walgreens and ran in.

What Happened Next Changed Everything

I expected the Walgreens visit to take 5 minutes at most. I'd go straight to the neosporin aisle, grab the tube and be done. Ha!

First, I'd forgotten how the whole pharmacy is structured like a trap. They hide all the necessities like Neosporin way in the back and force you to go through a maze of makeup, junk food and shiny chotchkees like a little lab rat.

It took at least 10 minutes to find the Neosporin. On the way I had somehow picked up a tube of lipgloss and some nail polish that I didn't need or want. Now, I was faced with a wall of Neosporins.

There were ointments, creams, generic options. Neosporin for pain and itch relief, just for pain relief, Neosporin for kids, and at least 12 different size options. I was paralyzed.

Then my partner started texting me. He was getting annoyed because somehow I had spent half an hour in there looking for something that would have been a 30 second errand.

And then it hit me.

Yes, I feel lost and overwhelmed. Not just in Walgreens, but in the entire AI landscape right now. In fact, this is exactly what happens when I go to YouTube or Substack to look for information that will help me troubleshoot something I'm building with AI.

The Walgreens Effect: How We're All Drowning in AI Information

Here's where the realization gets interesting and scary.

Every time you open YouTube, Substack, or any tech platform to learn about AI development, chances are you're not getting the Amazon experience (find what you need quickly and go back to what you were doing).

You're getting the Walgreens experience - trapped in endless aisles of information, bombarded with options, and leaving with a bunch of stuff you didn't need or want. All engineered by the platforms’ AI algorithms.

An hour later, you've spent all your time watching YouTube videos from your feed instead of building your AI app, doing your homework or working on your project.

You feel anxious, overwhelmed. Your brain is buzzing with random information you don’t have the tools to organize and digest. And you feel like you’ve just wasted a ton of time.

And turns out you’re not alone. Here’s some research I found:

- 94% of business leaders globally admit to "tech anxiety" that keeps them up at night

- 77% of people struggle with digital anxiety

- One in six show signs of digital panic

Think about it. Digital PANIC. Panic!

We getting mentally sick with an AI Overwhelm Epidemic! And not only that, but we’re also becoming physically sick with panic attack symptoms!

It’s Not A Bug, It’s A Feature

Now, you may ask why don’t platforms do something about this? Or why doesn’t the government intervene?

The answer to the latter question I’ll leave to you - just look around to see what the US government priorities are and who they’re going after with their resources right now. Clearly not the tech companies or platforms.

And the platforms are getting exactly what they want. Their AI algorithms are designed to extract as much of your time as possible. Their currency is not your dollars, it's your TIME.

They're free in the most expensive way possible - hijacking your brain and harvesting it for content consumption and "time on platform", just like those "plugged in" people in the movie the Matrix.

Now, Amazon is not a do-gooder who cares about your mental wellbeing. Their AI algorithm has figured out that to extract the most dollars out of you, they are better off letting you find and buy the things you want when you want them as quickly as possible.

So instead of trying to extract the most money out of you in a single monthly visit, they've made sure you come back 20 times a month for these shorter one-purpose visits. So they design their experience around that. And you are just a little lab rat following the cheese trail in their carefully designed maze.

The Technological Barriers Have Fallen - Now They Want Your Attention

Let's be clear about something: The technological barriers to creation have fallen. With endless AI tools for software development, writing and creating, anyone can build anything now. But building and creating has never felt more difficult and out of reach.

Why?

Because the new barrier is no longer technology. It’s ATTENTION.

AI is making social media platforms exceptionally good at hijacking our attention. So we need to take it upon ourselves to train and condition our brains to keep our own attention long enough to actually BUILD something.

It reminds me of that scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, where the orcs are swarming the fortress and Aragorn is yelling "HOLD! HOLD!" as the walls are about to break.

That's what we need right now . We need to engineer our own inner Aragorn to yell "HOLD YOUR ATTENTION!" any time the consumption distractions of "learn the latest about AI" are storming our brains. And causing us to feel FOMO and impostor syndromes.

The Quest Is NOT To Learn More About AI

Here's the harsh truth.

Our quest is NOT to learn more and better things about AI. But that's what the platforms who either want our time or our money want to make us believe. They don’t make money when we build apps and automations with AI. They make money when they distract us from building for ourselves and when we give them our time, money and attention.

Maven is a great example of that. Their business model is to sell courses, so what do they do - crank up the emails about "modern information retrieval evaluation in the RAG era", "SWE-bench as a case study", “late interaction beats single vector limits”, “highly multimodal search”.

I don’t know about you but anytime I get one of those jargon-filled emails, I feel a pang of anxiety. I also feel dumb because I don’t have a mental map to organize these concepts. If I don’t understand vector search retrieval, how am I supposed to organize a lesson on “single vector limits”?

These lightning lessons work to stoke up FOMO and the impression that if you ONLY took the course, they’ll educate you and you’ll be able to understand these technical topics.

A thousand dollars and 20 hours of attending the course later you’re no closer to completing your project than before. But Maven has drained your pocketbook and your time in exchange for an illusion of progress in the guise of “learning”.

Where Does That Leave You And I?

Step 1 - Awareness

First, we need to be honest with ourselves. Awareness is always the first step in a process of transformation.

We need to admit that we're suffering from an AI Overwhelm Epidemic. Your brain was not wired for this. Your brain is like a little house wire that these media platforms are now overwhelming with industrial strength electrical current. Of course it’s going to be overwhelmed. Of course your circuitry is going to fry.

We know from marketing that more than three options creates decision paralysis for most people. Think about it. Science says our brains have trouble choosing from four options. Let alone the hundreds of emails, newsletters and videos we’re bombarded with daily!

Step 2 - Acceptance

The next step in the process is to forgive ourselves. We are not doing anything wrong. We are not "dumb" for not being able to stay on top of this avalanche of information and noise.

In fact, this overwhelm is a symptom of indigestion - we've ingested too much and our brains have not had a chance to assimilate it and organize it into a coherent mindmap. Dr. Justin Sung calls this "learning debt" - accumulating more and more information without having a way to integrate it or put it into practice and leaving it to be digested by your future self.

It's like when you come back from a huge shopping trip and put all the purchases on your kitchen table. You have to spend some time organizing them and putting them away in their places, otherwise you won't have a kitchen table to eat on.

Step 3 - Set A Goal And Create A Realistic Plan

And the final step is to make a plan to:

• Create a tangible goal for ourselves - like build a specific application or automate a specific workflow using AI

• Have an integration path to put the information we've ingested into use - actually use it to finally build that AI app instead of endlessly reading or watching about how to build with AI.

• Regularly cull or eliminate information - channels, newsletter subscriptions and other sources of overwhelm - to keep your system healthy and focused on your goals.

  
  This requires weaponizing anything and everything you can think of to prevent your brain from being hijacked - from setting timers, accountability systems like alarms and punishment for overstaying or rewards for getting out of these information marketplaces quickly. I'll be sharing what's working for me and our group of Vibe Builders regularly on the Substack here.

Confession: I've Been Part of the Problem

I have a confession to make. I started the Vibe Builders Collective with good intentions - to help smart tech people build with AI and to create a community where we could test and give feedback on each other's apps.

But I've been realizing something uncomfortable. I've been contributing to the overwhelm.

I've been sending more links to read. Promising more resources and frameworks in my Substack. Creating more content that says "here's MORE you need to know about AI."

When my Vibe Builders members get on group calls, do you know what they're actually saying?

"Lisa, please help me start to build. Please hold me accountable."

One member literally said:

"Connect my credit card and charge me $250 if I don't complete this building sprint."

You're not asking for more information. You're DROWNING in it. And I've been trying to help a drowning person by pouring more water on them.

I owe you an apology. And a better way forward.

A Different Approach: Elimination, Not Addition

When I was training to climb Denali I didn't just show up and start climbing. Denali is the tallest mountain in North America and considered by some more difficult to climb than Everest, so you can’t just climb it by taking theoretical mountaineering courses and watching hundreds of YouTube videos.

What you need is a solid training plan with milestones and goals and the daily commitment to execute on that plan. Come rain or shine. Literally, I’ve spent many days lugging gallons of water up steep icy ski runs before the lifts started running.

The funny thing is that even during the expedition, I couldn't see the summit for most of the journey. Our chief guide pointed out the summit to us when we unloaded our gear on the glacier. He said:

“Take a good look at the summit right now because the next time you’ll see it will be 10 minutes before we reach the summit ridge or when you come back here.”

I had to trust the process and take one step at a time. Building with AI requires the same trust and daily commitment.

What I'm Building Instead

So here's what I'm doing differently with my YouTube channel and this Substack:

1. Struggle Sessions: Real, unfiltered building sessions where we tackle ONE problem together. Maybe we solve it, maybe we don't. But we're DOING, not just consuming.

2. Learning Paths: Clear, step-by-step guides that show you exactly where you are in the journey. Not standalone tutorials that you have to figure out how to fit into your understanding.

3. Elimination Frameworks: Tools to help you decide what NOT to pay attention to, so you can focus on what actually matters for your specific building goals.

The last two will be for the Vibe Builders (aka. paid Substack subscribers).

Think of it like this: If you want to climb a mountain, you don't need to know every possible route, every piece of gear ever invented, and the history of every expedition that came before you.

You need a MAP, a PLAN, and a GUIDE who's been there before.

That's what I'm creating - not more information, but a refuge from the information storm. A place where we can actually BUILD together.

So if you want to be part of this tribe of people helping each other stay out of the AI Overwhelm Epidemic and hold each other accountable for building and creating, then make sure to subscribe to this Substack.

The paid version of Substack comes with an invite to our Vibe Builders Collective Slack channel so you can join us to build without distractions there.