Workslop: When AI-Generated Work Creates More Work for Everyone

AI tools promised to make work easier, but a growing body of research suggests they're often creating a new category of busywork instead. This video examines "workslop"—a term coined by BetterUp Labs and the Stanford Social Media Lab to describe AI-generated content that looks polished but lacks real substance. We break down the data: how often workers encounter it, how long it takes to fix, what it costs organizations, and how it erodes trust between colleagues and even between employees and their managers. We also look at the broader pattern behind these numbers, from stalled ROI on generative AI investments to a proposed "knowledge decay" framework describing how AI-generated content can degrade organizational knowledge over time. Rather than treating more AI output as proof of better work, this video asks what it would take for organizations to tell the difference between genuine value and the mere appearance of productivity. In this video: • Researchers defined 'workslop' as AI-generated content that looks like solid work on the surface but lacks the substance needed to actually move a task forward. • Roughly 40% of American workers report receiving workslop within just the past month, making it a widespread rather than isolated issue. • Resolving a single workslop incident takes an average of nearly two hours, as recipients must fact-check, fill gaps, and effectively redo the work. • At scale, workslop carries a steep financial cost, with a 10,000-employee organization potentially losing about nine million dollars a year to it. • Beyond cost, workslop damages trust: a significant share of recipients report viewing the sender as less trustworthy afterward. • A follow-up survey found that a majority of employees have received workslop directly from their own managers, and most of them said it reduced their trust in leadership. • AI usage in the workplace has nearly doubled in two years, but rising adoption hasn't automatically translated into better outcomes. • A widely cited MIT Media Lab finding shows that the vast majority of organizations see no measurable return on investment from their generative AI projects. • Separate survey data shows employees spend hours each week correcting AI-generated content, even as many still feel the technology boosts their productivity. • Researchers Holweg and Davenport propose that low-quality AI outputs moving through business processes can compound errors and contribute to broader organizational knowledge decay. Sources and references: • AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity — Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2025/09/ai-generated-... • Workslop: The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Busywork — BetterUp Labs https://www.betterup.com/workslop • AI-generated 'workslop' is here. It's killing teamwork and causing a multimillion dollar productivity problem — CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/23/ai-ge... • AI Workslop Is a $9 Million Issue: Stanford, BetterUp Study — Entrepreneur https://www.entrepreneur.com/business... • Over Half of Workers Receive AI 'Workslop' From Managers or Supervisors — Zety https://zety.com/blog/workslop-trust-... • AI Use at Work Has Nearly Doubled in Two Years — Gallup https://www.gallup.com/workplace/6916... • Most GenAI Investments Fail, MIT Warns: 95% of Enterprises See No ROI — Pure AI https://pureai.com/articles/2025/09/2... • Zapier Survey Finds Workers Spend 4.5 Hours Per Week Cleaning Up AI Mistakes — GlobeNewswire (Zapier press release) https://www.globenewswire.com/news-re... • Don't Let AI Slop Muck Up Your Company's Processes — Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2026/06/dont-let-ai-s... The Next Operator Business × Technology × Psychology