Shopify CEO says employees' `slop grenades` making more work for everyone else
a day ago
- Tech leaders who once promoted AI as a key to unlocking employee potential are now recognizing its downsides, such as 'slop'—low-quality, unexamined AI output.
- Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke initially set AI as a baseline expectation but now criticizes employees for producing 'slop grenades'—poorly reviewed emails and code that burden colleagues.
- Lütke emphasizes AI should synthesize points in emails, not create lengthy, time-wasting missives that require review and correction.
- Duolingo CEO Luis Von Ahn backtracked on his 'AI-first' strategy, admitting that while AI demos well, it lacks human creativity at scale and can produce 'pure slop' in large-scale content generation.
- Researchers have coined the term 'workslop' for polished but superficial AI output that lowers productivity due to required revisions.
- A survey by BetterUp Labs and Stanford's Social Media Lab found 52.7% of workers sent workslop to colleagues, and 38% received it, costing an average of 3.4 hours per month in revision time.
- Workslop looks legitimate but lacks useful components, such as well-structured emails with broken links or needlessly complex code.
- Receiving workslop damages relationships: colleagues who send it are viewed as less competent and less friendly, and 36% of recipients avoid working with them in the future.
- The cost of revising workslop has increased from two hours in last year's survey to 3.4 hours now, with estimated costs of $186 per employee monthly and up to $9 million annually for a 10,000-person organization.