The AI 'workslop phase' is normal. Here's how to fast-track your way through it

"Every technological revolution has its awkward adolescence. We're living through AI's right now. Recent research from Stanford and BetterUp has given this moment a name: "workslop." It's the flood of hastily AI-generated content that clogs inboxes, clutters presentations, and quietly erodes productivity. The email that reads like it was written by a committee of robots. The strategy document with oddly formal phrasing and zero original insight. The presentation deck that says nothing new."

"The core problem is one of delegation versus collaboration. AI will deliver increased speed and efficiency, but most organizations have accidentally encouraged their people to treat it as something to offload to rather than something to work with. An associate generates a client memo with Claude and sends it along, complete with the telltale "AI can make mistakes, please double-check" footer still attached. A manager asks ChatGPT to write a strategy document and forwards it without adding context, nuance, or judgment."

"When personal computers arrived in offices, workers treated them as expensive typewriters. When the internet became ubiquitous, we spent years learning that you can walk 10 feet to talk to someone instead of firing off another email. Each time, we mistook the tool for the solution. We're making the same mistake with AI. Only faster, and at greater scale. The core problem is one of delegation versus collaboration."

AI adoption has produced a surge of low-quality, hastily generated content labeled "workslop," evident in generic emails, formulaic strategy documents, and empty presentation decks. Historical technology shifts show similar patterns of mistaking tools for solutions. The central issue is a delegation mindset: organizations often encourage offloading cognitive work to AI instead of collaborating with it. Examples include unedited AI memos and forwarded AI-generated strategy drafts lacking human judgment. The phenomenon increases output volume while degrading quality. The phase is predictable, necessary, and temporary, and the remaining challenge is how quickly organizations move past it.

Read at Fast Company