How much AI can a maintainer get away with using without losing their humanity?

🤖 This post includes some LLM-derived content 🤖 I've been recently thinking about how Open Source maintenance seems to be becoming a little more a slog recently - largely with the increased amount of contributions possible with AI agents - and how it impacts being a maintainer. I'm very fortunate that my literal job is to be an Open Source project maintainer (among other things) and that it's a privilege not many others have. That being said, it still doesn't mean that undoes the amount of work that seems to be increasing every month. Mike McQuaid recently wrote an eloquent post about how Open Source needs to be fun, which naturally struck a chord - the work that we do needs to be sustainable and enjoyable. As someone who feels like they're consistently pushing the edges of burnout - possibly due to my ADHD - I've hit a bit of a wall several times, where the overwhelm of so many things to do unfortunately leads to needing to (often silently) take a step back from the project for my…