Ex-Anthropic engineer says using AI agents may be your way of avoiding something in life

AI agents today have become mainstream. From OpenAI’s Codex to Meta’s Muse, there are agents for virtually every task. But what if the reason you are using AI agents constantly is that you want to avoid something in your life? At least that’s what ex-Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar believes.In a post on X, Thariq described the overwhelming feeling of using AI agents, comparing it to the psychological condition of mania. But he admitted that rarely did he actually get something out of it “There’s 100 per cent a kind of mania you can get into with coding agents, where it feels like you’re getting a lot done and working all the time but nothing is really happening,” Thariq Shihipar wrote.The former Claude Code engineer speculated whether this could be a form of a coping mechanism. “I think it's often a form of avoidance of something else in life,” Thariq added. A screenshot of the X post. In one comment, Thariq Shihipar linked a post that compared addictions to anaesthesia for suffering. “Addictions help with suffering because anesthesia helps with suffering,” the post said. “Therefore, the way to unlearn all addictions simultaneously is to remove the underlying suffering.” Thariq Shihipar left Anthropic earlier this month. Though he did not publicly give a reason for his exit.In the past, many prominent names in the world of AI have mentioned the need to constantly use AI agents. Andrej Karpathy, who coined the term vibe coding, said earlier this year that he was in a “state of psychosis,” while working with agents. “I’m just like in the state of psychosis of trying to figure out what’s possible, trying to push it to the limit,” he said on the No Priors podcast. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, too, has been quite open about the way he uses AI. In April this year, Altman said he was switching to “polyphasic sleep,” involving multiple periods of sleep within 24 hours. “I am switching to polyphasic sleep because GPT-5.5 in codex is so good that I can’t afford to be sleeping for such long stretches and miss out on working,” he wrote.While AI agents have not raised alarm bells when it comes to mental health yet, AI chatbots have. Reports indicate that using AI chatbots excessively may also lead to a state of AI psychosis where users may feel paranoia or delusions.- Ends