Generative artificial intelligence has been discussed in various contexts practically nonstop over the past few years. There are lots of people hyping the technology as fundamentally overhauling the foundations of work and making waves in the job industry. On the other hand, there are plenty of skeptics, too, wondering how much actual benefit the tech brings to businesses and employees, underneath all the hype. (Not to mention the environmental costs and potential copyright issues.)
In a recent article, the Harvard Business Review points out a fascinating paradox. There’s a surge in the use of generative AI across workplaces, sure. However, at the same time, most companies are “seeing little measurable ROI [return on investment].” Case in point, a recent report from the MIT Media Lab showcased results: a jaw-dropping 95% of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in AI tech.
Or, as HBR wittily puts it: “So much activity, so much enthusiasm, so little return.”
One possible reason for this is that AI tools are used to create so-called ‘workslop.’ In a nutshell, this is content that might look polished on the surface level but lacks quality and depth.
What’s more, producing ‘workslop’ actually creates extra work for your colleagues, harming productivity. This then has a knock-on effect on morale.
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As per research findings from BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab, a whopping 41% of employees have encountered this ‘workslop’ AI-generated output.
Each instance of this type of content costs nearly 2 hours to be reworked.
That’s on top of all the issues with productivity, trust, and collaboration that it creates.
HBR explains that ‘workslop’ “masquerades as good work,” while, in fact, lacking the substance to “meaningfully advance a given task.”
Employees use more accessible AI tools to rapidly create polished-looking content, such as slides, reports, summaries, code, etc.
“But while some employees are using this ability to polish good work, others use it to create content that is actually unhelpful, incomplete, or missing crucial context about the project at hand. The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver.”
Based on the findings of HBR’s recent and ongoing survey of 1,150 United States-based full-time employees across various industries, two-fifths (40%) have reported receiving ‘workslop’ within the last month.
Those employees who have encountered ‘workslop’ state that, on average, 15.4% of the content they receive qualifies as that.
‘Workslop’ is more common among peer employees (40%) than it is sent to managers (18%) or sent from managers down the ladder (16%).
These issues are most prominent in industries focused on professional services and technology.
Most workers who receive low-effort AI-generated work viewed their colleagues as less creative, capable, reliable, trustworthy, and intelligent.
Moreover, over a third (34%) of employees who were on the receiving end of ‘workslop’ notified their teammates or managers of this. The knock-on effect is a drop in trust. Just under a third (32%) of people who received ‘workslop’ said they were less likely to want to work with the producer of said content in the future.
