Shopify CEO says employees’ ‘slop grenades’ are making more work for everyone else

Shopify's co-founder and CEO Tobias Lütke has expressed frustration with employees over the misuse of artificial intelligence. Lütke, who once championed AI as a means to unlock employees' full potential, now warns that employees are producing "slop grenades" – AI-generated emails and code that require excessive revision. He explained that employees should attempt to complete tasks without AI assistance before asking for additional resources.

The misuse of AI results in illegitimate-looking output that needs revision, wasting time for both the creators and recipients.

A survey conducted by BetterUp Labs and Stanford's Social Media Lab found that 52.7% of American full-time desk workers have sent workslop to colleagues, a term coined to describe AI-generated output requiring revision. 38% of those surveyed reported receiving workslop, which they estimated cost them 3.4 hours per month on average to fix.

The survey also revealed that receiving workslop can hurt work relationships, with 36% of respondents wanting to avoid collaborating with the sender in the future. The additional 3.4 hours spent on revision per month is an increase from last year's survey, where employees spent an average of two hours revising workslop. This amounts to $186 per month in cleanup time per person and up to $9 million in lost productivity annually for a company with 10,000 employees.