AI Workslop Is a Cry for Help

How to respond humanely to soulless work.

The words are there, but they’re empty. The work is complete, but the worker is absent.

When you receive AI workslop, what you’re really receiving is loneliness. You can roll your eyes. Or you can ask, how do I help?

Before Generative AI, mediocrity at least took time. Even a bad memo took an afternoon. You had to show up.

Now, you can summon a serviceable draft from thin air, in seconds. The first time it sails through without objection  — proof that nobody’s looked at it  —  the temptation to do it again becomes irresistible. Why make the work yours when no one cares if it is? Why waste the time?

Before long, it’s not even a choice anymore. It’s just how you work now. On AI autopilot. It’s a vicious cycle that kills pride and makes you feel invisible.

When you see workslop, it’s a sign. Someone is telling you they’re slipping away.

But AI is not the enemy. It is not the cause of bad work. AI can be an effective work partner, helping you explore ideas, refine thinking, round off rough spots. It works when you’re present alongside it. Not so much when you use it as a replacement for giving a damn.

The issue is not whether AI has touched your work. It’s whether you did. Whether you have breathed the spark of life into it. Thanks to AI, you can be absent and still send inert output that looks like work.

AI is a loneliness accelerator. When you receive workslop, you’re seeing someone who chose the absence. Your move: choose connection.