Even sophisticated users are fed up with technology’s latest obsession.

If you’ve ever complained about uninvited AI pop-ups taking over your screen, or wondered why once-reliable apps now prioritize flashy summaries over simple functionality, rejoice. You too are part of a growing rebellion.

The furious Hacker News thread, “I’m drowning in AI features I didn’t ask for and I hate them,” became a digital bonfire for angry tech-savvy users, racking up 300 points and over 200 comments as a collective rallying cry against the relentless and often unsuccessful introduction of AI into everyday tools. What started as a complaint about utilize The article quickly became a manifesto of outrage, exposing how Silicon Valley’s AI gold rush is creating alienation rather than adoration.

What is your core complaint? Forced integration that is more intrusion than innovation. Users criticized Google for replacing their trusted assistant with Gemini. The assistant tinkers with basic features like alarms and smart home controls, while bloating the interface with redundant summaries that bury organic results. Google Sheets makes in-flow edits confusing with AI suggestions. Atlassian’s Confluence has an annoying button that slows down your workflow. Firefox’s AI context menu causes annoying UI changes.

And who would have thought it would be a good idea to have Siri summarize your alerts on your iPhone?

Even niche software is relentlessly updated with clean search, intuitive design, and ample AI. One commenter sarcastically expressed a sense of betrayal: “It feels like we’ve gone from ‘Don’t be the bad guy’ to ‘You’re going to use our AI, you’re going to love it.'”

Research suggests AI burnout

The Hacker News revolt is not an outlier. AI burnout is supported by a growing body of evidence.

A 2025 Asana study found that 84% of employees are digitally exhausted and 77% are overwhelmed by AI scaling. The “AI Paradox” shows that tools aimed at efficiency increase stress, leading to burnout rates of 45% among heavy users.

Opinion polls paint a similarly grim picture. 66% of all workplaces are burnt out, and 82% are at risk from rapid changes such as mandatory return to the office and AI overhaul. Pew found that 52% of US workers are worried about the threat to their jobs from AI, while KPMG noted a tipping point from “fear factor” to “cognitive fatigue” as agent deployments quadrupled.

And the academic literature only reinforces the insight that AI collaboration can lead to a spike in counterproductive behavior through loneliness and emotional exhaustion. Supervisor AI emails increase burnout in anxious people, but properly integrated tools can increase self-efficacy. Wiley warns of “change fatigue” with cascading implementations that put companies at risk of crisis. In X, users discuss the dual role of AI. The idea is to reduce burnout in cybersecurity and sports, while promoting creator fatigue due to insufficient deployment.

Unsurprisingly, since it was hacker news, the thread offered a number of survival tactics, including using uBlock Origin filters to attack AI elements and ditching Windows and using Linux distributions like Fedora and Ubuntu to avoid ads and notifications.

“My gaming PC was a nightmare until I moved to Linux,” said one user, praising its nimbleness and lack of distractions. Apple got a partial pass for slow AI rollout, although Siri’s “machine learning” setbacks drew ire.

Some acknowledged AI’s occasional victories, such as Confluence’s time-saving search, but warned of a “wave” of over-reliance. But while optimists envisioned conversational interfaces making clunky web design obsolete, skeptics dismissed it all as profit-driven hype.

Users weren’t necessarily anti-AI. They are anti-bad products and crave opt-out options and tools that “just work” without a cognitive tax. Clearly, AI has already proven to be transformative. But as the tools proliferate faster than the reasons to use them, even true believers are starting to lose interest.