gshc2020.com

On Monday, Lilian Weng, the cofounder of Thinking Machines Lab, became at least the fourth high-profile figure at tech's cutting edge to cite the state of her health in her resignation announcement. (More later on the career change that became public shortly thereafter.)

Before Weng, Fidji Simo, the CEO of AGI at OpenAI, the xAI cofounder Greg Yang, and Tom Siebel, the CEO of C3 AI, all stepped down from their roles, saying they were too sick to work at the level of intensity they expected from themselves.

Each situation is unique, and we can't know if work triggered the execs' health problems. But the pattern begs the question: Is the AI arms race moving too fast for its own creators?

Chronic illness and relentless work: a match made in hell

Various tech and business execs have made lofty predictions that AI will make us so productive that three- or four-day work weeks could one day be the norm.

Jan Gerber, the CEO of a recovery clinic in Zurich for burned-out execs, told Business Insider he's seeing the opposite happen.

"If you don't want to fall off the train, you need extreme focus, extreme hours, and constant networking just to keep up," he said of working in AI.

Gerber shared an anecdote from a Silicon Valley founder: Although he uses AI agents to hash out million-dollar contracts that he signs off on, the time freed up is only stuffed with more work.

"This doesn't mean more time for family, but more deals happening, more to keep an overview of," Gerber said.

Svetlana Makarova, an AI product leader at the healthcare platform IKS Health who previously worked at the Mayo Clinic, told Business Insider's Thibault Spirlet in April that human workers are beginning to face "unrealistic standards for productivity, patience, and availability. Unlike people, AI never has a bad day."

That level of automation can come at the expense of human workers' creativity, which would otherwise boost well-being and ease stress, said Dr. Judith Joseph, a psychiatrist based in New York City whose employees work bi-coastally.

"When workers sacrifice creativity and individualism in order to meet high demands to overperform and use automations, this may contribute to burnout," she said.

Now more than ever, the tech industry is obsessed with speed and optimization, from workflows to blood sugar. As Business Insider reported last year, the days of job security and lavish perks have been replaced by the constant threat of layoffs and the intense pressure to dominate AI.

Stress, of which there is plenty in Silicon Valley, is itself hard to deal with, and can trigger and worsen poor health. Long-term conditions that are physiologically distinct have a few things in common that are incompatible with hardcore work culture: mental and physical exhaustion, time away for health appointments, and for some, unpredictable flare-ups.

"I've experienced firsthand how difficult healthcare can be to navigate, even when you have every possible advantage," Simo wrote in her statement.

Hardcore industry, hardcore workers

Then there's the brutal catch-22: Tech attracts folks with a consuming, all-or-nothing approach to work.

"There's a degree of self-selection in who ends up running tech companies," Gerber said.

Competition is intense as the industry faces a wave of consolidation "that will leave a small number of winners," he said, adding: "That 'eat or be eaten' dynamic pushes people to work even harder, ignore early warning signs, and keep pushing until they hit burnout."

In her resignation notice, Weng said she considered taking a narrower role, but said, "that's not my personality. If I cannot give it 100% for what I should be responsible for, I fail my job."

Simo wrote that she regretted not taking Mark Zuckerberg's advice when she worked at Facebook to take a year of medical leave. "Looking back, I realize that a lot of what made me successful also made this decision incredibly difficult," she said.

There's also the matter that, partly thanks to AI, the tech industry has quickly gone from one with relative career stability to facing (admittedly still unproven) predictions of mass unemployment.

"Other industries do not face this same drastic level of employee replacement threat," Joseph said.

As Business Insider's Julia Herbst and Robert Scammell have reported, software engineers have borne the brunt of AI disruption so far.

As the models and agents the industry worked so hard to create shift its working culture, some of its leaders are rethinking their long-term career strategies.

Siebel of C3 AI, for one, returned to the company as CEO shortly after leaving it.

In her resignation notice on Monday, Weng wrote that she wanted to move out of the cofounder role, not the industry. On Wednesday, OpenAI said she would be rejoining the company — where she previously worked from 2018 to 2024 — in a research position.

"Grit and endurance are not the only skills required to have impact over decades," Simo wrote. "Sometimes the harder thing is to stop, listen, and trust that taking care of yourself today makes it possible to contribute for much longer tomorrow."

Read next

Kashmira Gander

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Kashmira Gander is a senior editor at Business Insider's London bureau. She oversees reporters who cover health, first-person stories, consumer culture, immigration, and the changing workplace.  She joined BI from Newsweek in 2022, where she was the health correspondent during the COVID pandemic, science editor, and a news reporter. Previously, she was a reporter and lifestyle writer at The Independent.Her work has also been published in the London Evening Standard and The i newspaper. 

Joshua Nelken-Zitser

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

Joshua Nelken-Zitser is an award-winning Senior Reporter at Business Insider’s London bureau covering wealth, spending, and consumer culture.Through features, on-the-ground reporting, and As Told To essays, he explores how people use their money, from everyday spending to the lifestyles of the ultrawealthy, and what those choices say about modern life. His work focuses on the culture of money: how money shapes places and people, and how the world around them influences how they choose to spend.Joshua previously spent five years on the news desk, reporting from the US, across Europe, and the Middle East. In 2024, he received the Axel Springer Award for Change — Journalistic Piece of the Year and was highly commended at the British Journalism Awards for a multi-year investigation into subsidized gender-transition surgeries in Iran.His debut book (TRAUMA BONDS: How Generational Trauma Shapes, Divides and Connects Us) will be published by HarperCollins in January 2027.Got a tip? Email [email protected]. You can also follow him on X or Instagram.ExpertiseFeatures and reporting on affluent lifestyles, consumer spending, and the culture of money, alongside first-person stories about how people live and spend.Popular articlesWealth and spending:Series: Welcome to the 'Hamptons of England'Series: Living large in tiny homesThe new luxury real-estate agent uniform: Botox, stylists, and designer wardrobesI watched the ultra-rich descend on Venice for Jeff Bezos' wedding — and was shocked by how little locals cared'Clients bring back entire wardrobes': Tailors say Ozempic is reshaping Wall StreetThe new millennial flex: spending thousands on a birthday weekend at a chateauInternational features reporting:Iran will pay for your gender-transition surgery, but it comes with a cost — your dignityShe was killed by a look-alike she met on Instagram, police say. It thrust her family in Africa into a true-crime nightmare.How the trans alpaca ranchers of Custer County, Colorado, are forging a new frontierThe European housing crisis warping millennial life: The average Croatian lives with parents until 33Lithuania is the world's happiest place for under 30s, but it's also Europe's suicide capitalThe 'fairytale' French castles being used to shelter Ukrainian refugeesMost armies ignore autistic people. Israel is calling them up.

• AI
• OpenAI

The consistent message of the opinion polls since the new prime minister walked into Downing Street almost a fortnight ago is that Labour is enjoying a "Burnham bounce". And this has now been confirmed by the party's convincing victory in Thursday's Greater Manchester Mayoral by-election.

Polls conducted in the last week put Labour on average in the mid 20s. It is the party's highest standing since the beginning of last year and compares to their rating of 19% in late June when Sir Keir Starmer announced he was standing down.

But with Reform polling only narrowly behind Labour, Burnham's party still has a long way to go before it can face the prospect of fighting a general election with confidence.

The new PM effect

The Burnham boost is far from unprecedented.

All but one of the recent mid-term changes of prime minister have been followed by an increase in the popularity of the incumbent government. Support for Labour rose by seven points after Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair in 2007, while the Conservatives enjoyed a six-point bounce when Boris Johnson took over from Theresa May in 2019. Only Liz Truss' arrival in Downing Street in 2022 – which was overshadowed by the death shortly thereafter of Queen Elizabeth II – failed to give her party a boost.

We should also bear in mind the depth of the electoral hole that Burnham has inherited as Labour leader. The 19% at which Labour stood when Sir Keir resigned was the lowest poll rating passed on by any prime minister departing mid-term – even lower than the 23% bequeathed by Liz Truss when she resigned after just 45 days in office.

Against that backdrop, it would have been very surprising indeed if the replacement of the deeply unpopular Sir Keir by the relatively popular Burnham had not given Labour a short-term boost. However, even after Mr Burnham's bounce, his party's poll average is still the lowest for any newly minted mid-term PM, while the party is still well adrift in the polls of the (relatively low) 35% it won at the 2024 general election.

That said, Labour's victory in Thursday's Manchester Mayoral by-election was convincing. True, Labour's 47% share of the first preference vote was well down on the 63% that Andy Burnham secured in the last mayoral contest shortly before the 2024 general election. However, not only did it represent a near doubling of the 24% that Labour registered across the region in May's local elections, but also it was even four points up on Labour's tally locally in the 2024 general election – and thus a much better performance than would have been anticipated from even the latest national polling.

Reform's difficulties

But with still no more than a narrow lead over Reform, it is unsurprising Burnham has ruled out an early election. In any event, Reform's displacement from first place in the polls for the first time in over a year appears to owe more to its own difficulties than it does to Labour's new-found popularity.

Reform has been dogged in recent weeks by questions about the legality of the source of some of its funding and about whether Farage should have declared to the Commons' authorities some of the funding he received before being elected an MP. Following these allegations, Farage announced on 7 July that he was standing down and putting himself again before the voters of his Clacton constituency in a by-election now scheduled for 13 August.

This move appears to have backfired. Immediately before Farage's announcement, Reform's average poll rating stood at 27%. In the polls conducted immediately after Farage's announcement, it fell by three points to 24%, the level at which it still stands now, and the lowest it has been for 15 months. At the same time, Farage's personal poll ratings are now the worst they have been since he returned as Reform's leader during the 2024 election campaign.

In the Manchester by-election, Reform's share of the first preference vote was nine point down on its tally across the region in May's local elections. As in the Makerfield by-election, the party seemingly suffered from the advance made by Rupert Lowe's breakaway from Reform, Restore Britain, who won nearly 9% of the Manchester vote, outpolling the Conservatives in the process.

But for Reform's difficulties, the "Burnham bounce" would probably have been insufficient to put Labour in the lead in the national polls.

Greens suffering

The principal source of that bounce has been clawing voters back from the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, both of whom have suffered a two-point drop since Burnham's uncontested victory in the Labour leadership contest. For the Greens – much of whose increased support in recent months came from disappointed 2024 Labour voters – the change of prime minister has proven particularly damaging. The Greens' current 11% tally is as much as four points adrift of where it was when Sir Keir announced he was leaving.

When he resigned, 14% of Labour's 2024 election voters said they would now back the Greens. That figure is now 9%.

Winning back former Labour voters has generally been a key component of the Burnham bounce. Overall, 67% of those who voted Labour in 2024 now say they would vote for the party, compared to 57% when Sir Keir indicated he was leaving Downing Street.

Following Farage's difficulties, Labour is also now losing fewer of its 2024 voters to Reform. But the same is true of the Conservatives, whose loss of support to Reform in the polls during in this parliament has always been much greater than that suffered by Labour. Far from suffering from a Burnham bounce, Kemi Badenoch's party has edged up to 20% in the polls for the first time since last spring.

Burnham's arrival has given Labour new hope. But despite having overtaken Reform in the polls, the new Labour leader still has to prove he can win back the working class pro-Brexit voters that Labour once regarded as its core vote but who now form the heart of support for Reform.

To do this – and put Labour on course for victory in 2029 - Burnham needs to deliver on the policy challenges facing his government, which remain as formidable as those that beset Sir Keir. Labour's prospects at the next election will ultimately depend on whether voters have come to believe that what he has said he will do is actually happening.

John Curtice is Professor of Politics, Strathclyde University, and Senior Fellow, National Centre for Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe

Top picture credit: Reuters

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. Emma Barnett and John Simpson bring their pick of the most thought-provoking deep reads and analysis, every Saturday. Sign up for the newsletter here

Get in touch

Are you personally affected by the issues raised in this story?

• Andy Burnham
• John Curtice
• Reform UK
• Labour Party
• Conservative Party
• Liberal Democrats
• Green Party (England and Wales)

The robots make scheduled rounds, stream video to a remote operations center, and investigate alarms. If they detect unusual activity, a human checks the alert and decides whether to notify on-site guards.

Damon Henry, Asylon's CEO and cofounder, told Business Insider that his company charges about $120,000 to $170,000 a year, depending on patrol frequency. This "white glove security service" includes the robots, maintenance, software, and remote operators, he said.

"You compare that against the national average for a fully-loaded 24/7 guard shift is about a quarter million right now," he said. "So you get good ROI."

The financial return may propose an obvious case for replacing existing human labor. However, the security-guard workforce is also experiencing high turnover, creating openings that must be filled just to replace departing workers.

A retention crisis

About 1.3 million Americans work as security guards. Employment is projected to remain roughly flat through 2034. Yet the industry expects to produce more than 160,000 openings each year, almost entirely to replace departing workers, a July report from the UC Berkeley Labor Center said.

"I think it's a retention crisis," Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Labor Center's Low-Wage Work program and coauthor of the report, told Business Insider.

The report found that annual turnover in the investigation and security services industry, where security guards make up about nearly three-quarters of workers, reached nearly 89% in 2024, compared with 66% across the entire private sector. Turnover peaked near 99% in 2022.

The problem isn't necessarily a lack of people in the US who could become guards — Lopezlira said employers are struggling to retain workers for a low-paying job with inadequate training and higher safety risks.

The median security guard earns $18.70 an hour, and nearly 43% lack employer-sponsored or union-sponsored health coverage, the study said.

Robots take over the third shift

Henry, the Asylon CEO, said customers want to stay ahead of the curve by implementing automation and physical AI into their infrastructure.

The other problem Asylon's customers face is reducing what's called a "blackout period" — gaps in coverage that employers can't staff or keep staffed.

"Training them and staffing them is super inconsistent, and it's a big burden on the business," Henry said.

Asylon has roughly 25 customers with about 50 robot deployments across the country. Henry said that some have deployed Asylon's robots so they could leave an otherwise vacant guard post unfilled.

The bots handle some of the more repetitive tasks: circling a property's perimeter, maintaining a visible security presence, and determining whether an alarm warrants a human response. One human Asylon employee at a remote operations center supervises six to eight robots across multiple sites, Henry said.

At Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, one Asylon robot dog — a retrofitted quadruped from Boston Dynamics affectionately named Benzie — helps patrol the exterior areas of the 2 million-square-foot sporting venue. The impetus for bringing the robot was safety, Henry said.

"On third shift, they had security guards that were essentially walking the streets of downtown Atlanta," he said. With Benzie, guards can remain indoors until a physical response is needed.

Henry said theft and vandalism at the site went down to zero within the first couple of months of deployment and has remained that way since, he said.

A spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz Stadium did not respond to a request for comment.

Part of the appeal of the robots is to shift the risk. Security guards die on the job at more than twice the rate of workers overall, the Berkeley report found. Nearly two-thirds of the fatal injuries result from assaults and other violent acts.

"Technology and robots can shift the risk, not just the tasks," Lopezlira said, adding that removing a person from an isolated overnight patrol could reduce their exposure to violence.

Robots still need people

The robots are not yet outright replacing human guards. Sometimes they can't finish the patrol without human help.

Henry estimated that Asylon's robots can autonomously navigate about 90% of a typical patrol. Remote human operators may still need to step in when the machines encounter crosswalks, doorways, or other complex areas. In addition, every threat is still verified by a person.

"It's like self-driving cars," Henry said. "They're getting pretty good, but they're not quite there."

Some security bots can run into more fundamental problems. In 2024, San Antonio International Airport experimented with Knightscope's 420-pound roving security robot, designed to respond to door alarms and inspect workers' badges.

The airport employees found that the robot struggled to navigate crowds, focus its camera on badges, and provide reliable audio and video feeds, San Antonio Express-News reported in May. The airport ended the trial run in about a month.

A spokesperson for San Antonio International Airport declined to comment.

William Santana Li, CEO of Knightscope, declined to comment on San Antonio's operations and said the company's robots have operated autonomously for over 4.4 million hours. He said Knightscope has 434 clients in the US.

Even the most reliable robot can only automate part of a guard's work. Human security guards, for example, de-escalate conflicts or respond to people experiencing mental-health crises — all of which require situational judgments.

Lopezlira made the case that automating the repetitive tasks of a guard's work underscores the need for better training and working conditions if they'll only be needed for high-stakes situations.

"The realistic near-term effect is not that guards are replaced," he said. "The human role is going to be pushed toward those hardest, higher-stakes parts of the work."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at lloydlee.71. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Read next

Lloyd Lee

You're currently following this author! Want to unfollow? Unsubscribe via the link in your email.

• Robotics

Most of them are frustrated that AI isn't handing them back the time and energy they thought it would. Many of them feel less productive and more emotionally exhausted now than they did a year ago.

Here's how AI is contributing to burnout in founders

1. It took away the easy tasks

AI allows us to get rid of repetitive, boring work — tasks like cleaning up a spreadsheet or reformatting slides. However, these tasks also give our brains a much-needed break, so we can recharge in between tasks that require a high cognitive load.

With AI taking on many of those tasks, many founders are finding their workday is now made up entirely of decisions that really matter, with few breaks. They're working at full intensity all day.

2. It replaced the things we were trying to get better at

AI creates a strange dynamic where your output may increase, but you feel less capable as your skills stay the same.

Before mass AI adoption, if someone wanted to get better at sales, they might struggle for a while to create better scripts. With practice, they'd improve over time.

If, however, you have AI write your scripts, you'll never develop the skills needed to improve. In fact, you'll probably get worse, because you're never practicing the very skill you're trying to advance.

Feeling ineffective is a core symptom of burnout, and getting good at something is protective against burnout. It's a large part of what makes hard work feel worth doing. Without that goal of improving, a lot of people lose the drive that was keeping burnout at bay.

3. Nobody feels like they're keeping up

Founders hear rumors about how AI is catapulting their competition ahead. Usually, there's no way to know whether such information is true, but it can create a sense of urgency that you're always behind.

I see many founders deal with uncertainty by working more. I've seen some founders add multiple AI tools each quarter, hoping to relieve the pressure, only to end up with more things to manage, even while each tool promises to help them do more in less time.

4. Lack of connection leads to burnout.

Almost all of the founders I work with talk about the loneliness they feel. They feel isolated from friends who can't relate to their work, or disconnected from family due to their long hours.

Using AI for daily tasks may compound the lack of human connection. Rather than having an administrative team or executive assistant, a founder might be alone, staring at a screen all day.

Loneliness has been linked to poorer sleep, high blood pressure, weaker immune systems, and higher stress hormones. When founders talk about their health falling apart, the isolation they experience often plays a considerable role.

Founders often feel they only have two options

In the past month, two high-profile AI executives — Lilian Weng of Thinking Machines Lab and Fidji Simo of OpenAI — both announced they were stepping back from their respective companies due to ongoing health reasons.

(Editor's note: The day after announcing her departure from Thinking Machines Lab, Weng was confirmed to be joining OpenAI as the leader of a team focused on accelerating internal research.)

In her goodbye note, Weng wrote that if she couldn't give 100% to what she was responsible for, she was failing at her job.

I hear similar things from the founders I work with. They believe they're either at 100% all the time or they're failing. Because of this, they don't dare rest, even when they're tired or sick.

Simo acknowledged that a lot of what made her successful was also what made the decision so hard. I see that in my coaching practice too; the same drive that helped someone get a company off the ground won't let them slow down.

One founder I work with kept telling himself he'd sleep once things slowed down. He said he'd spend a ton of quality time with his kids once he could come up for air. Of course, things didn't slow down.

It wasn't until he overheard his son telling a friend, "I don't have the kind of dad who can come to baseball games and stuff," that he realized his kids were growing up while he kept waiting for things to slow down.

The solution: find a middle ground

The exhaustion founders describe is often real. However, here's a big difference between "I'm depleted, and something has to change" and "I'm burned out."

Someone labeling themselves as burned out can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they stop looking for solutions.

Here are some solutions I've seen in the founders I've worked with who manage their lives well, despite the stress of the job:

1. They're willing to give something up

They realize they can't optimize everything all the time — including their health — while also working 90 hours a week, no matter the number of AI bots they have running.

They're often willing to trade in a bit of potential revenue in order to stay in the game for the long haul.

2. They think differently about AI tools

When AI saves them time, they don't automatically fill the hours with more work. They automate the tasks they don't care about mastering, but keep doing things they want to improve upon.

They also don't eliminate every boring task, because they want to give their brain a little rest in between hard decisions.

3. They understand there are small changes they can make to reduce their daily stress

Rather than worry about an impressive 3:30 a.m. morning routine, they might focus on sixty seconds of slow breathing in between meetings. Or, they take 15 minutes to walk outside during their lunch breaks to rejuvenate themselves.

Some of the happiest and healthiest founders I've worked with protect their time with family the same way they'd protect an important meeting with an investor. They're intentional about it and willing to accept that there may be a trade-off for doing so.

Do you have a story to share about experiencing AI burnout? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at [email protected].

Read next

Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, host of the Mentally Stronger podcast, and an international bestselling author.Her book, "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," has sold over one million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. Her newest book is called “The Mental Strength Playbook.”Amy's articles on mental strength attract millions of readers every month. Her TEDx talk, "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most-viewed talks of all time with over 25 million views.A sought-after speaker, Amy has been hired by Google, Adobe, Prudential, Under Armour, and the Texas Conference for Women to speak about mental strength.Amy lives on a sailboat in the Florida Keys. When she's not running or swimming, you can find her in a tiki hut working on her next book. Visit her website or connect with her on Instagram.

• Artificial Intelligence