The high cost of sloppy AI use

You’ve been seeing it too, right?

A coworker, a client, a salesperson sends you a document. It’s clean, typo-free, grammatically correct — a lot more so than we’re used to seeing in real life — excellently formatted…

But there’s something wrong with it. Beside the eerie level of surface perfection, it can be hard to put your finger on the problem. But it often has these things going on:

• It’s longer than this type of document usually is.
• Oddly wordy. Often making the same points in very similar ways a few times.
• Extremely confident in its opinions, even when it’s saying things you know to be incorrect.
• Critical points are often missing entirely.

It’s AI “workshop.”

Read about it in this important Harvard Business Review article: AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity.

The gist:

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.

You get workslop when someone over-uses or misuses AI. When they don’t start with clarity about the topic or project. When they don’t know how to give smart prompts. When they take its perfect-looking output as final — because it looks final. When they don’t correct errors and simplify everything.

That’s what happens when people don’t have training on AI. Or when they’re lazy.

It’s annoying, but the cost within workplaces is real. According to the study the article is about:

• 53% of people report being annoyed by workslop.
• 38% confused by it.
• 22% offended by workslop.
• About half viewed colleagues who sent workslop as less creative, capable, and reliable.
• 42% saw them as less trustworthy.
• 37% saw that colleague as less intelligent.

That all adds up to a big drain on any workplace. The cost in time and for relationship is huge.

And we haven’t even started talking about the workslop version of fundraising!

If your workplace is forcing people to use AI and not providing training and standards, it’s time for a change. Find a way to improve things. Or find a new place to work.