The Rise of AI ‘Workslop’: A New Workplace Hazard
▼ Summary
– Researchers have coined the term “workslop” to describe low-quality, AI-generated content that appears useful but lacks substance.
– Workslop is defined as content that fails to meaningfully advance a task, often being unhelpful, incomplete, or missing context.
– This phenomenon is suggested as a reason why 95% of organizations using AI report seeing zero return on their investment.
– A survey found that 40% of 1,150 U.S. employees had received workslop in the past month.
– To prevent workslop, leaders are advised to model thoughtful AI use and establish clear team guidelines and norms.
A new term has emerged to describe the flood of subpar content created by artificial intelligence in professional settings: “workslop.” Researchers from BetterUp Labs, working alongside the Stanford Social Media Lab, introduced this label to identify output that looks competent on the surface but fails to deliver real value. According to their recent article in the Harvard Business Review, workslop is essentially AI-generated material that pretends to be useful work while lacking the depth needed to make genuine progress on a task.
This phenomenon might explain a startling statistic: a overwhelming 95% of organizations experimenting with AI report seeing no return on their investment. The research points to workslop as a potential culprit, describing it as content that is often unhelpful, incomplete, or devoid of necessary context. Instead of saving time, this low-quality output forces colleagues to spend extra hours deciphering, fixing, or completely redoing the work. The real problem, experts note, is how workslop simply transfers the burden to the next person in line, creating more problems than it solves.
An ongoing survey of 1,150 full-time employees based in the United States sheds light on how widespread the issue has become. The data reveals that 40% of respondents acknowledged receiving workslop from a colleague within the last month, indicating that this is a frequent workplace occurrence. To combat this growing problem, the researchers emphasize that leadership must take proactive steps. They recommend that managers demonstrate thoughtful and intentional use of AI tools themselves. Furthermore, establishing clear guidelines and acceptable use policies for teams is critical to ensuring that AI serves as a helpful assistant rather than a source of frustration.
(Source: TechCrunch)
