'If AI is being added, is it actually benefiting the work, or is it putting the expectation that they're supposed to generate more work?'
New research from Stanford University and BetterUp Labs has found that 40 percent of employees say they have experienced “workslop” in the last month, and it isn’t just the latest catchphrase — it’s a growing problem that is already costing employers about $186USD per month in wasted time.
Workslop – defined as “AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work” by the researchers – is now “ubiquitous," according to Fenwick McKelvey, associate professor of communication studies at Concordia University and co‑director of the Applied AI Institute.
“We have very few ways of effectively dealing with it, and we released the technology without any safeguards to prevent that,” McKelvey says, explaining that the pace and hype of AI advancement is leaving many employers behind the curve in their implementation of the tech, scrambling to catch up with their own policies and processes.
It's not only employers responsible for AI use rules, though, McKelvey stresses. Canada's policy-makers and the slow pace of AI regulation is also a factor: “Most of our AI policy is really focused on the economic development angle, and less on some of the social impacts that we're seeing here.”
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