The Hidden Causes of AI Workslop—and How to Fix Them

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Marketing, Teams, Business/entrepreneurship, Harvard, Management, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Hbr, Business/management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Innovation, Communication

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As organizations and their employees ramp up their generative AI experimentation, leaders are facing a new problem: the rise of AI-generated "workslop," which seems okay on the surface but doesn't actually pass muster and, when passed on to colleagues, ultimately hurts team efficiency, performance, trust and morale. Kate Niederhoffer, chief scientist at BetterUp, and Jeff Hancock, professor of communication at Stanford, say that while it's tempting to blame individuals for this kind of misuse of ChatGPT and other tools, management is more often that not contributing to the workslop epidemic by putting pressure on employees to produce more and to use AI when possible without offering clear training or guidelines. Niederhoffer and Hancock offer advice on how to stem the tide of workslop. They are coauthors of the HBR articles "AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity" and "Why People Create AI “Workslop”—and How to Stop It."

Transcript

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0:00.0	A new digital reading experience from Harvard Business Review is here.
0:05.0	It's the HBR Interactive Issue.
0:07.0	Swipe through pages, search each issue, and listen to articles with audio narration.
0:12.0	The interactive issue is available now to all HBR Print Magazine subscribers.
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0:19.0	Subscribe today at HBR.org slash interactive issue.
0:37.3	I'm Alison Beard.
0:38.8	And I'm Aud Ignatius, and this is the HBR Ideacast.
0:42.1	Artificial intelligence promised to make us faster, smarter, and more productive at work. So why does it
0:55.2	sometimes feel like it's doing the opposite? If you're trying to figure out how to use AI without
0:59.8	undermining your culture, collaboration, or credibility, this episode is for you. Today we'll
1:05.2	explore why AI...
1:06.4	Oh, stop, stop, stop, Alison, did you even write this?
1:10.2	Good catch, Adi.
1:12.0	No, our producer, Mary and I decided to give it to chat GPT.
1:16.0	And that's not because we were busy with other stuff that we were,
1:18.4	but it was to try to prove the point of today's episode,
1:21.7	that the rise of AI has also meant the rise of what our guests call AI Workslop.
1:27.3	And that is bad product that kind of passes, but actually creates a lot more problems than it solves.
1:33.2	So I know who you're talking about and your guests have written a couple of articles for us on AI Workslop.
1:39.3	They've been among the most popular things we've published in the past year.
1:43.5	Workslop is a problem.
	...

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