It helps me think, you know?

I took a walk through the open-plan office last night, after most people had left. Just to see. It’s funny, the things you notice in the quiet.

On almost every desk, next to the abandoned coffee cups and the screensavers, a window was left open. Not email. Not Slack. A chatbot.

There it was on the junior designer’s monitor, a half-finished query about colour palettes next to a wall of rejected ideas. On the senior accountant’s screen, a long, patient explanation of some arcane tax law, the AI’s tone soothingly competent. I saw one on a manager’s laptop, still asking for "three concise bullet points for an encouraging but firm email".

It’s the new cigarette break, isn’t it? That quick little hit, that moment of stolen clarity. No one goes outside to pace in the cold anymore. They just open a new tab and inhale. The little typing indicator is the new curl of smoke.

"It just… helps me think," someone told me last week, whispering it like a confession. "I get stuck, I ask it a dumb question, and it unblocks me."

I get it. Of course I get it. It feels so clean, so efficient. No tar, no smell, no yellowing teeth. Just a pure, sterile shot of cognitive performance, delivered through the same clean glass you use for work. It’s a productivity tool, we tell ourselves. Like a good pen. Or a faster processor. But when I see those lonely windows glowing in the dark, I don’t see productivity. I see a thousand little dependencies, a thousand tiny mental crutches we’ve seamlessly integrated into our workflow.

There used to be a social aspect to the old addiction. You’d find camaraderie in the huddled circles of smokers outside. Now, we just take our hits alone at our desks, each of us in our own private bubble of generated text. It’s so much more efficient this way, isn’t it?

As for detoxing… maybe try a "dumb questions" notebook. Before you open the chat window, force yourself to write down three possible answers by hand, no matter how stupid they seem. You might find your own brain still has a spark or two. And if you want the science behind why your brain craves these loops, Anna Lembke’s work on Dopamine Nation is basically the user manual for our own addiction.

Your turn to confess.