AI Waiting Taxes: The Hidden Cost of Idle Time in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is widely framed as a technology of acceleration. Yet users routinely wait — for inference, retrieval, and generation. This paper introduces the AI Waiting Tax (AWT): the hidden cost of idle time in AI-mediated interaction.

AWT foregrounds waiting not as neutral downtime but as suspended attention — a cognitive and affective burden that accumulates across sessions. It provides the experiential foundation for the later structural analysis of the AI Latency Tax (ALT).