Shopify CEO to employees: Don't make AI do all your work
Tobias Lütke, the CEO of Shopify, has cautioned his team against over-reliance on AI for their tasks. He characterized unchecked AI output as 'slop grenades,' which only serve to create extra work for his colleagues. Similarly, duolingo's CEO, Luis von Ahn, revealed challenges linked to AI-generated content, which researchers dub 'workslop.' This unproductive generation is costing organizations…
Shopify's Tobias Lütke has warned employees against relying on AI to generate all their work. In an interview with The Knowledge Project podcast, Lütke said he was seeing emails and code produced by staff that had not been properly examined, which he dubbed "slops" or "workslop". These low-value outputs, though polished, can actually hinder productivity. Lütke advised that AI should be used to summarize points in an email, not generate lengthy, sloppy content.
The term workslop was coined by researchers to describe such AI-generated output. A survey by BetterUp Labs and Stanford's Social Media Lab found that more than half of U.S. desk workers send workslop to their colleagues, and 38% receive it. On average, employees spend 3.4 hours per month editing AI-generated work, costing organizations millions in lost productivity.
Duolingo's CEO, Luis von Ahn, had previously declared the company AI-first, integrating AI into evaluations and replacing human contractors with AI tools. However, after seeing how convincing AI-generated writing looked in demos, he realized the potential for scale to produce low-quality filler. Von Ahn estimates a significant portion of AI-scaled output can be low-quality, requiring cleanup before reaching users.
Written by urgent.news from Times of India's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
This story
This is one outlet's version. Read the fullest account.
