As AI starts to leave the lab and diffuse into the workplace, AI slop is increasingly becoming a big problem that organizations have to deal with.

Let’s define it first. AI slop is any work product that contains no new intelligent information.

It is just a retelling of what is already known. It is often the result of unintelligent prompting and/or lack of context for the AI to draw on.

(Note that I am excluding from this definition intelligent output that is plainly wrong—especially those that defy reality or are outside the value system, etc. This is perhaps an even more important problem, especially when AI is granted increased autonomy. But to keep the discussion focused, I am excluding it.)

AI slop is particularly bad because it is very easy to produce (and hence there will be a lot of it very quickly), and it just wastes the valuable time and effort of the people for whom it is intended. Actually, a lot more can be said about its bad effects—suffice it to say, AI slop is the sand in the gears of any organization that has adopted AI. It just destroys any advantage and makes things worse than the original.

Previously, when every word had to be typed (well, we conveniently ignore all the copy/pasting that was going on), slop was harder to produce. So, that acted as a natural barrier. But now, you can choose between “make it a paragraph” or “make it 10 pages”—all without spending even a minute thinking yourself.

As with everything else, this is a people problem. It is absolutely not a reason to stop using AI.

But how can organizations guard against AI slop taking over? I believe there has to be a strong culture that guards against it.

Because slop is also a social thing. If one person in the team is able to produce slop with impunity, then it will surely spread to others.

Every work product needs to be subject to the “what is the new information in this?” test. Certain types of work warrant this test more than others. For example, design work of all sorts really requires the author to have put in a great deal of thought, whereas information-gathering work just needs to have referenced the right sources.

In any case, let us all unite in rooting out the evil of slop before it takes over our organizations.