Hedonic Adaptation in the Age of AI: A Perspective on Diminishing Satisfaction Returns in Technology Adoption

Abstract: The fast paced progress of AI through scaling laws connecting rising computational power with improving performance has created tremendous technological breakthroughs. These breakthroughs do not translate to corresponding user satisfaction improvements, resulting in a general mismatch. This research suggests that hedonic adaptation the psychological process by which people revert to a baseline state of happiness after drastic change provides a suitable model for understanding this phenomenon. We argue that user satisfaction with AI follows a logarithmic path, thus creating a longterm "satisfaction gap" as people rapidly get used to new capabilities as expectations. This process occurs through discrete stages: initial excitement, declining returns, stabilization, and sporadic resurgence, depending on adaptation rate and capability introduction. These processes have far reaching implications for AI research, user experience design, marketing, and ethics, suggesting a paradigm shift from sole technical scaling to methods that sustain perceived value in the midst of human adaptation. This perspective reframes AI development, necessitating practices that align technological progress with people's subjective experience.