"Workslop": The Hidden Cost of Low-Effort AI
"Workslop" - It's a new term I came across that perfectly describes a growing problem: AI-generated content that looks polished but lacks substance. The creator offloads the hard thinking, and their colleague is left to fix it or redo it from scratch.
Think of a professor receiving a student essay that, as one article described it, has "a lot of text without saying anything substantive to 'advance the work.'" Or getting code from a teammate that runs but has poor design, wasting your time in code review with endless comments and discussions.
The problem isn't the AI tool itself. It's using it without clear guidance and critical thinking. When teams are just told to "use AI," this is the result.
It wastes time and, more importantly, it erodes trust. Imagine you keep receiving poorly generated code from the same developer. You quickly start to doubt their capability and reliability.
The solution is simple: The person using the tool is 100% responsible for the quality of the output. We need to set standards and treat AI as a powerful assistant, not a replacement for our own expertise.
What are your thoughts? Have you encountered "workslop" yet?
Sources: