When he was writing A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway was obsessed with nailing the book’s ending — so obsessed, in fact, that he wrote 39 separate versions of it. When asked in an interview what had so stymied him about the process, his answer was characteristically Hemingway, “Getting the words right.”

These days, the idea of finessing anything to perfection seems almost anachronistic. Why work that hard when ChatGPT can churn out a perfectly serviceable ending for you?

I don’t actually believe that’s true, though. While AI is extremely valuable for many things, the temptation to use it as a crutch in place of thoughtful work is becoming harmful. Instead, we’re seeing a profusion of what has become known as “workslop,” defined as AI-generated work that superficially appears to be high-quality, but that actually lacks the meaningful substance required to advance a particular task.

You’ve probably been a slew of AI workslop yourself. An AI-generated summary that doesn’t actually capture the key points. A polished strategy memo that says nothing. An email that's grammatically accurate but requires three follow-ups because it failed to address the actual question.

For leaders, monitoring workslop is a new challenge: how do you encourage efficiency without accepting mediocrity? How do you leverage AI's capabilities without letting it replace the critical thinking that........

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