# Workslop: AI's productivity problem

- **Episode:** [236](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/236.md) (2025-09-30)
- **Type:** news-roundup
- **Tags:** ai, productivity, technology
- **Time:** 7:45–11:17 (start 465s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/236?t=465](https://truthliesandwork.com/236?t=465)

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[7:45] Leanne Elliott: What?
[7:45] Al Elliott: Yeah, I know. I was a bit jealous of you coming up with a new word, so I've got my own. When I said got my own new word, it was in Harvard Business Review. Check me out. As I'm speaking to you, I'm drinking tea and I've got a monocle in because I'm that fancy
[7:57] Leanne Elliott: Wow. I didn't even know you knew what HBR was
[8:01] Al Elliott: To be honest, I did use your subscription to log in, so
[8:03] Leanne Elliott: Did you? Cheeky
[8:05] Al Elliott: Anyway, so my new word is called workslop. What do you think that means?
[8:10] Leanne Elliott: Pleasant
[8:11] Al Elliott: Pleasant, yes
[8:12] Leanne Elliott: Workslop. I don't enjoy the word
[8:14] Al Elliott: No. No
[8:15] Leanne Elliott: I'm guessing it would be kind of like tasks that are just, ugh, not very good
[8:23] Al Elliott: Kind of. Well, no, I was being kind. No, it's not that
[8:28] Leanne Elliott: Okay. It's a new word
[8:29] Al Elliott: It's a new word. Yeah. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Well, have you heard of AI slop?
[8:34] Leanne Elliott: No
[8:35] Al Elliott: Right. So something which is big on X, Twitter, Twix, whatever you wanna call it. AI slop is when All of the replies or the posts are written by AI. And so—
[8:44] Leanne Elliott: Say that again
[8:44] Al Elliott: So the post— so a post is written by AI, that's classed as AI slop. There's so much more AI or so many more AI replies on Twitter than you think
[8:55] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[8:55] Al Elliott: And once you start to understand and you can see patterns and you'll see the AI replies are basically empty, they'll go, what an amazing insight. I love when I learn stuff like this. No human's gonna write that. And there's so many people out there who are using AI to reply to posts on Twitter
[9:11] Leanne Elliott: So that's what workslop is
[9:12] Al Elliott: Workslop is similar, but it's when you use AI at work to produce something and it's a bit rubbish. Now I'll just use, I'll just give you 2 scenarios
[9:23] Leanne Elliott: So the majority of guest requests that we get, we'd call them workslop
[9:26] Al Elliott: We would call them guestslop. That's what we'd call them
[9:28] Leanne Elliott: But no, but it's work. Somebody writing a pitch email, sales pitch email using AI that's not very effective
[9:33] Al Elliott: Yeah
[9:33] Leanne Elliott: That's workslop
[9:34] Al Elliott: That's workslop
[9:35] Leanne Elliott: Okay
[9:35] Al Elliott: Someone who says, Oh, I need a report on so-and-so. So they go to ChatGPT and say, please write a report on the tree frogs of Amazon, their decline in the last 5 years. And it comes up with like, you know, that's slop
[9:50] Leanne Elliott: Right
[9:50] Al Elliott: The difference is what this HBR article described it as, empty content. They said empty calories was what they used. Basically, anything which comes out and says a lot of things but doesn't really say much is AI
[10:03] Leanne Elliott: Mm-hmm
[10:04] Al Elliott: Or workslop. Now, to be fair, we know a lot of people who also talk that way
[10:07] Leanne Elliott: They would do
[10:08] Al Elliott: But—
[10:09] Leanne Elliott: That say a lot and say nothing at all
[10:11] Al Elliott: Yeah, that's talkslop
[10:13] Leanne Elliott: Some of us have made a career out of it
[10:14] Al Elliott: But the, the content looks fine. You produce it, but when you scratch the surface, there's no real substance. Now, it is starting to cost companies a little bit of money because the research from, let me see, BetterUp Labs and Stanford found that 41% of workers have been on the receiving end of this workslop. So you think, well, is it, is it harmless? No, because usually if you ask someone to write a report and then someone sends it to you and you can't really put your pin on, your finger on why it's bad, but you know it's bad, you're gonna have to spend hours rewriting it. And generally it's about 2 hours, um, on average people spend rewriting this workslop. So that's hours of lost productivity. There's frustration, there's trust, all that kind of thing. Lee, what are your thoughts?
[10:54] Leanne Elliott: I, I think there are people out there who are lazy and not clever
[11:03] Al Elliott: Yes, yes
[11:04] Leanne Elliott: And they're the people that are gonna engage in workslop
[11:07] Al Elliott: Yes
[11:08] Leanne Elliott: I think there are plenty of other people out there that are lazy and clever
[11:11] Al Elliott: Yes
[11:11] Leanne Elliott: So we'll leverage AI to the best of its ability and then spend the time putting the polish on
[11:17] Al Elliott: Yeah
[11:17] Leanne Elliott: I'm seeing so much backlash against it that it's like you can never use AI for copywriting or any kind of content creation. It's like, of course you can. It's, it's a, it's a speedy little way of just getting the bones of something on there that you can then use your expertise and knowledge and research to flesh out. Um, but yeah, I think, I think it's getting old quickly, and I think I can see it, I can see it reducing, particularly in terms of content creation, um, because the strategy won't work, and the minute it doesn't work, there's no point in doing it. So people have to pivot