"Workers are becoming overly reliant on AI. The result? Lackluster product, now coined "workslop," according to from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab. Workslop -- which the researchers defined as "AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task" in an accompanying for Harvard Business Review (HBR) -- has some serious impacts. Forty percent of the 1,150 employees BetterUp and Stanford surveyed reported receiving workslop in the past month."
"Employees taking the easy way out of a work assignment isn't new, but the tools they're using to do so are. AI tools, like ChatGPT, Gemini, and various task-specific agents, are fixing code, creating presentation slides, generating text, and summarizing emails or articles for workers. As workers hand over more tasks to AI assistants and do less of the work themselves, they are turning in poorer results that someone, whether it's a peer or a manager, then has to redo or correct themselves."
Workers increasingly rely on AI tools to perform tasks such as fixing code, creating slides, generating text, and summarizing content. AI-generated submissions often lack the substance to advance tasks meaningfully, producing what is termed "workslop." Recipients of workslop must interpret, correct, or redo the output, transferring effort from creator to receiver. Forty percent of surveyed employees reported receiving workslop in the past month. Workslop appears across industries but disproportionately impacts professional services and technology. Managers and peers spend hours fixing low-quality AI output, with implications for productivity, career development, and unclear workplace ROI.
Read at ZDNET
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