Research Concludes AI Is Killing Productivity Through “Workslop”

There are those that think that AI is going to take over the workplace and make people more productive. The opposite is occurring.

Generative AI is generally garbage. This has long held true when you just leave AI to do all the work and turn that work in as a final product. Yet, whenever I point this out to people cosplaying as “experts”, I’m regularly told that I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about because, according to them, AI is either already perfected or pretty close to perfected already. Either way, according to self-described “experts”, AI is taking over the workplace and the work is going to be a multitude better than when humans do it and will cost a fraction of what humans are paid.

The mountain of evidence that generative AI is often just garbage is continuing to grow. We’ve documented numerous cases like lawyers getting in trouble for fake AI inserted citations in legal briefs, the CNET scandal, the Gannet Scandal, bad “journalism” predictions, fake news stories, more fake stories, Google recommending people eating rocks, the 15% success rate story, bad chess tactics, the Chicago Sun-Times scandal, a Canadian team submitting fake legal citations in their legal briefs, other attorneys submitting fake citation filled legal documents, the 91% failure rate story, AI deleting user data, and the lawyer who got fined $10,000 over a bogus AI written legal brief.

Generally speaking, generative AI is basically hot garbage when you let it do the work. It’s a story that is being repeated over and over and over again. Yet, when you browse the news about AI, you still get headlines that make you believe that AI is already perfected technology and that companies are just in the process of integrating it into their workflows before basically laying everyone off after. Here’s a sample of the garbage media outlets are pushing:

What jobs will AI replace, and which are safe?
Why AI is replacing some jobs faster than others
AI Replacing Jobs? CEOs Sound The Alarm For White-Collar Workers
OpenAI releases bombshell list that reveals every single job ChatGPT can already replace
AI is not just ending entry-level jobs. It’s the end of the career ladder as we know it

One thing is clear: there is a very big disconnect between the media’s headlines and actual reality. While major media outlets will no doubt continue to churn out garbage headlines like that, reality is going to continue to march on whether the media wants to believe it or not.

Recently, research has come out pointing out that people who are turning to AI are actually producing low quality garbage. As a direct consequence, productivity is taking a massive hit.

In a publication on the Harvard Business Review, research suggests that as much as 95% of businesses that embrace AI have seen no measurable return on their AI investment. In fact, AI is churning out what is described as “Workslop”. From the article:

A confusing contradiction is unfolding in companies embracing generative AI tools: while workers are largely following mandates to embrace the technology, few are seeing it create real value. Consider, for instance, that the number of companies with fully AI-led processes nearly doubled last year, while AI use has likewise doubled at work since 2023. Yet a recent report from the MIT Media Lab found that 95% of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in these technologies. So much activity, so much enthusiasm, so little return. Why?

Yeah, I’ll tell you why. This is a direct result of a product that is insanely oversold and incredibly under-delivered. Can you use generative AI to produce work? Sure, but it requires considerable human intervention to ensure that it works… good enough.

That is precisely the problem with the interpretation modern society has on AI. The myth is that it’s basically a magic button that does all the work with little to no effort. Generative AI is simply not that. Can it be a tool to tighten up grammar in a given work? Sure. Can it help translate text from one language to another? I’ll give it that. Can it help animate a shirt fluttering in the wind in an animation or video game? I believe that. Can it completely write a whole computer program? No. Can it completely write a massive business report? Forget it. Can it produce legal briefs? Not a chance. It can be a tool, but it is by no means a freaking replacement. Yet, for a number of people, they seem to frequently forget this aspect of AI and assume all sorts of crazy things.

Of course, this research isn’t just a one off thing, either? The research finding that AI is actually harming productivity, rather than improving it, is being replicated in additional research. TechDirt is noting additional research from MIT Media Lab (while also noting the research I managed to pick up separately) which talked about how much AI workslop is harming productivity in the workplace:

The survey defines workslop as “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.” Somewhat reflective of America’s obsession with artifice. And it found that as use of ChatGPT and other tools have risen in the workplace, it’s created a lot of garbage that requires time to decipher:

“When coworkers receive workslop, they are often required to take on the burden of decoding the content, inferring missed or false context. A cascade of effortful and complex decision-making processes may follow, including rework and uncomfortable exchanges with colleagues.”

Confusing or inaccurate emails that require time to decipher. Lazy or incorrect research that requires endless additional meetings to correct. Writing full of errors that requires supervisors to edit or correct themselves:

“A director in retail said: “I had to waste more time following up on the information and checking it with my own research. I then had to waste even more time setting up meetings with other supervisors to address the issue. Then I continued to waste my own time having to redo the work myself.”

In this way, a technology deemed a massive time saver winds up creating all manner of additional downstream productivity costs. This is made worse by the fact that a lot of these technologies are being rushed into mass adoption in business and academia before they’re fully cooked. And by the fact the real-world capabilities of the products are being wildly overstated by both companies and a lazy media.

I have no problem echoing what Karl Bode is saying here. The current state of AI is very far removed from the “next industrial revolution” mythology pushed by AI companies currently on a world grifting tour. It’s not going to magically mean you no longer need human beings to do the work. It’s not going to cause humanity to go extinct. What’s more, it certainly isn’t this magical cure-all technology that’s going to somehow fix everything in the world. No amount of overhyping press releases or gullible journalists eating up every corporate word is going to change that.

While we’ll continue to point out the obvious flaws in the AI hype train, there’s going to be no shortage of “journalists” who are going to continue to help push the AI hype – even as more and more evidence surfaces that generative AI is a massively overhyped grift. Still, as some might say, there is a sucker born every minute.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.