Generative AI Addiction Disorder

By 2025, what Deirdre Barrett’s framework had predicted on structural grounds—that any technology capable of presenting the reward features of productive work at supernormal intensity would exploit the builder’s reward system with the same predictability that junk food exploits the eater’s—had begun to appear as a clinical category. Studies documented affected individuals who “struggle to limit AI interaction despite negative consequences,” for whom “attempts to reduce usage may lead to withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, or restlessness.” Over time, excessive reliance on AI tools was found to “impair cognitive flexibility, diminish problem-solving abilities, and erode creative independence.” These are the signatures of supernormal-stimulus exploitation—regulatory failure, withdrawal upon stimulus removal, degradation of the capacities the organism would need to function without the stimulus. The clinical literature named them empirically fifteen years after Barrett named them structurally. The most culturally distinctive