Workslop.
There's a new word going around for something you've probably already felt.
Workslop.
It's what you get when someone runs a task through AI, doesn't really read it, and forwards you the result. It looks great. Clean formatting, confident tone, all the right words. But when you actually try to use it, there's nothing there. No real thinking. No decision. Just a polished shell that leaves you to do the actual work.
I've started noticing it everywhere. A report that says a lot and means nothing. A "strategy" that's five paragraphs of filler. An email that clearly nobody read before they hit send.
And it doesn't feel like cutting corners. It feels productive. You asked AI, you got something long and professional-looking, you sent it. Done. But you didn't move the work forward — you just moved it downstream, onto whoever opens it next.
A recent study found about 41% of workers got hit with this kind of AI busywork last month, and each piece took nearly two hours for someone else to untangle. Worse, it quietly wrecks trust. Send me workslop a couple of times and I stop believing your name on anything.
My recommendation is simple, even if it takes some discipline: You do the thinking, and let AI do the polishing. Never the other way around.
AI will happily generate impressive-looking nothing all day long, so the judgment has to be yours.
Before anything goes out under your name, read it back and ask one question: Does this actually say something, or does it just look like it does? If you can't point to the decision or the real insight in it, it isn't finished. Fix it, or don't send it.
And when workslop lands on your desk, call it out. Kindly, but call it out. The fastest way to get it out of your business is to quit accepting it.
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Here are the best insights our team found from across the web this week.
There is more AI news than any operator has time for. So we read it so you do not have to.
Our take: This is where workslop ends up. If a message can be written by nobody and read by nobody, it didn't need to exist. Before you hit send, ask whether there's a decision in it a machine couldn't have made.
Our take: If you've told your team "we're an AI company now" and stopped there, you ordered the workslop. Write down the two or three tasks where AI is welcome, the ones where it isn't, and what "done" means. It fits on one page, and it will save your team hours of untangling.
Our take: Run it, then ask which of these tasks you're actually thinking through with AI — and which you're just laundering through it.
Our take: Calling it out doesn't need to go this far. You don't need firings or bans — just a standard everyone knows. If you didn't read it, don't send it. Take the signal seriously though, because sending slop upward is quietly becoming a career risk.
Our take: Workslop isn't a productivity problem, it's a reputation problem. The two hours gets absorbed. The trust doesn't come back.
That's it for today. See you soon.
Brian, Murphy, John, Beth, and Jake — some of the humans behind AI Front Desk.