As the US midterm elections approach, voters are voicing concern about AI. According to an NBC News poll of registered voters, 57% believe the risks of AI outweigh the benefits. A rising political cohort is particularly concerned. A Pew Research poll showed that 61% of adults under 30 say more AI in society will make people worse at creative thinking. A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that 74% of Americans think the government is not doing enough to regulate AI.

Can you blame them? The CEOs of the largest AI companies chose a curious tactic: scaring their prospective users into submission. “Use it or get left behind” is the narrative, buttressed by gleeful proclamations that AI will destroy whole industries and cultural institutions.

AI’s detractors are on to something – thus far, the cost of AI disruption is not worth the benefits. A recent Goldman Sachs study showed AI impact on productivity amounts to a rounding error. It’s become better known for ushering in a new kind of bureaucracy: “workslop.” Harvard Business Review defines it as LLM-generated output that creates the illusion of productivity, but that later has to be corrected.

Indeed, slop is AI’s chief export. And there’s a simple way for lawmakers to mitigate its harms: institute a small slop tax.

“Slop” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2025 – defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”. Once you see it, it’s everywhere you look. Fake bands streaming on Spotify; absurd AI-hallucinated cooking........

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