AI adoption divide creates flood of workplace ‘workslop’, study finds
MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES — A new study reveals that artificial intelligence (AI) is creating a sharp divide among white-collar workers, splitting them into two distinct groups: “pilots” who skillfully use AI to enhance their work and “passengers” who rely on it to offload tasks, flooding workplaces with low-quality “work-slop.”
This trend is eroding workplace trust and costing companies millions in lost productivity without delivering a measurable return on investment, according to a report by MIT Media Lab.
High cost of AI-generated clutter
Fortune reports that the emergence of “workslop”—a term coined by research from the Stanford Social Media Lab and coaching firm BetterUp—is a direct consequence of passive AI adoption. This dragging, cheap content appears well-dressed but contributes very little and poses a significant burden on the company’s productivity.
The researchers discovered that over the last month, 40% of users have been exposed to AI-generated content at the jobsite, and 15% of all workplace content is AI-generated today.
The impact of this digital clutter is both cultural and financial. More than half of employees report feeling annoyed, confused, or offended when they receive work slop, and subsequently view the senders as less creative, capable, and reliable.
This erosion of trust carries a steep price tag: an “invisible tax” estimated at $186 per employee per month, totaling over $9 million annually for a 10,000-person company.
Divide in AI adoption
The core of the problem lies in the difference in state of mind between the two groups: pilots and passengers. GenAI is used by pilots who tend to be high-optimism employees to empower their creativity and implement it with well-considered guidance and feedback. They use GenAI 75% more often at work and 95% more outside of work than their passenger counterparts, treating it as a collaborative tool.
In stark contrast, passengers primarily use AI as a shortcut to offload work, leading to the work-slop problem. This inherent disparity in methodology explains why, even with twice as many AI applications since 2023, 95% of organizations have not realized any tangible payback on their investments.
According to the study, the fight against this is to ensure that companies do not adopt the concept carelessly, but rather follow particular recommendations and practices to adopt a collaborative, pilot-like approach to achieve superior results.
