Defining AI workslop and how to fight it at your business
A new study published in the Harvard Business Review has coined the term “workslop.” The researchers say it describes low-quality output at work created using artificial intelligence.
AI in the workplace
The use of AI in the workplace only continues to rise, up 50% since 2023. Companies using fully AI-led processes nearly doubled just last year.
Despite its proliferation, a report from the MIT Media Lab found 95% of organizations have seen no measurable returns from investment in AI.
A team of researchers from BetterUp Labs and the Stanford Social Media Lab came together to understand why that was happening.
They found the issue to be what they call workslop.
What is workslop?
It plays off the idea of “AI Slop” which is the name for inaccurate, attention-grabbing, low-quality videos, which are now commonplace on social media platforms.
It’s the same idea with workslop which they describe as “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.”
It comes in different forms including low-quality reports, slides and charts.
“The reason why it’s slop is because the human element, the human in the loop, is not implemented enough for the actual output,” Louis Carter, CEO of Best Practice Institute, told Straight Arrow News.
Carter said he believes the problem really lies with the humans not directing the prompt correctly.
“You have to be an expert in prompting an AI in order to use it responsibly and in a way that will provide information that is useful to your audience,” Carter said.
Cost of workslop
Researchers found 40% of U.S. desk workers received workslop last year.
When surveyed, workers said receiving that work changed their perceptions of their colleagues.
Researchers also found correcting each piece of workslop took around two hours.
Those incidents cost $186 per month per employee, which came out to an annual cost of $9 million for a company that employs 10,000 people.
What’s the solution?
You’d be hard-pressed to find a company trying to implement less AI into their workflows, so how do companies avoid AI slop?
“Training is essential, right?” Carter said.
He said it’s like any other tool you need to learn how to use.
“Really smart people are out there trying out AI and creating slop,” Carter said.
He pointed to the implementation of other technologies into workplaces, citing computer generated images, or CGI, into films and said it’s never perfect at first.
“We’re still very much novices to the AI movement, the Gen AI movement,” Carter said. “This is the beginning. CGI had an entire progression. AI is right at the beginning, and we can expect that the slop is going to continue.”
Researchers found workslop is happening across all industries, but professional services and technology were disproportionately impacted.
“What we need to do is train ourselves,” Carter said. “Get smarter about it, dive into learning and doing with what you currently do. Whether you’re a doctor, lawyer, you’re a marketer, you’re a salesperson, whatever it might be, there is an AI stack for you, guaranteed.”
As the studies show, AI is not going anywhere and pushing against it may only make things tougher for you.
“Every transformation that ever occurred came with fear,” Carter said. “Everything from the Industrial Revolution to the social networking revolution, and now the AI revolution, and each one had effects and interactions and outputs and relationships that happened. This is no different. This is the beginning of a new era that will define our future and our generation.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
