Workslop: Why the AI Productivity Boom is Failing and How to Fix It
The massive capital flight into AI has Wall Street demanding immediate returns, yet skyrocketing corporate tech investments are yielding “workslop” instead of wealth.
The barrier to monetization isn’t the technology’s capability; it’s a profound failure to account for human psychology. By treating the AI rollout like a mere software update and neglecting widespread workforce exhaustion and fear, corporate leaders are actively stifling the very behavior change required to make these tools pay off.
At Web Summit, Kate Niederhoffer, a social psychologist and chief scientist at BetterUp, and Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford University Social Media Lab, emphasized the importance of a pilot mindset over a passenger mindset when it comes to AI as a productivity enhancement and the need for leadership to foster trust and learning.
Speaking with the Investing News Network (INN) at Web Summit, Niederhoffer and Hancock offered a more nuanced view, framing workslop as a visible symptom of deeper issues around culture, well-being and agency.
When employees feel less purpose, less psychological safety and more pressure to take AI shortcuts, the conditions for thoughtful, high‑value augmentation are unlikely to be there.
The real cost of workslop: Insights from industry experts
The panel discussion centered on “workslop”, a term the pair coined that refers to AI-generated content that appears polished but lacks substance.
Onstage, they cited a collaborative 2025 study that revealed AI use for low-quality content ended up costing organizations US$9 million per 10,000 employees.
The research identified an “invisible tax” of US$186 per month per employee based on time spent decoding the AI output, then redoing the underlying task instead of using the AI-generated version.
Out of 1,150 full-time deskworkers surveyed, 40 said they believe they have received AI workslop in the last month, while 53 percent admitted to sending workslop.
Further, survey respondents reported significant negative emotional and relational impacts.
Approximately half of those surveyed viewed colleagues who sent workslop as less creative, capable and reliable, and most reported feeling annoyed, frustrated and confused after receiving workslop. Only 21 percent said they were impressed when they received AI-generated work.
The speakers highlighted that AI should enhance human collaboration and creativity, rather than replace human roles and discussed the potential for AI to create new job opportunities by leveraging human experience and touch.
“We have data that suggests that over a 10-year time frame, a construct called mattering, which is very much about the experience of purpose in your work and that you bring value to your work,” explained Niederhoffer after the presentation. “That’s declining probably about 6 percent from 2017 through current, and so we’re experiencing that…
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