AI tools churn out 'workslop', but 'the buck' should stop with bosses

Summary

Artificial intelligence sure has been taking a lot of flak lately.Only 8.5% of the 48,000 people recently surveyed by accounting firm KPMG said that they “always” trust AI search results. Another report from Gartner found that more than half of consumers don’t trust AI searches, with most reporting “significant” mistakes.A McKinsey study found that 80% of companies using generative AI have seen “no significant bottom-line impact”, with 42% of them literally abandoning their AI projects. An MIT study found that 95% of the AI pilot projects at the big companies they surveyed “failed”.And now there’s workslop!A new study published in the Harvard Business Review says that more than 40% of US-based full-time employees reported receiving AI-generated content that “masquerades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task”. This “workslop” is “destroying productivity”, according to the study’s researchers.Who is really to blame for workslop? Sure, blame big tech companies for yet again releasing untested and unproven products before they’re ready for prime time. Or the media and tech community who, for the past three years, have been writing pieces like Yahoo Japan wants all its 11,000 employees to use Gen AI to double their productivity by 2028 or AI will replace doctors, teachers, and make humans “unnecessary for most things”. All of this creates a lot of unnecessary hype and unfounded expectations.But in the workplace, the buck always stops with the boss. The responsibility for AI’s “workslop” lies fully at the feet of the employer.For more than 20 years, my company has implemented customer relationship and financial management applications at hundreds of small and mid-sized businesses across the country. We’ve worked with thousands of employees. We’ve had good projects and straight-out failures. As a technology consultant, we’ve made our share of mistakes. But the most common root cause of technology disappointments, failures and letdowns ca...