"Slop" is a warning for management: AI can generate waste
Digital technology experts have coined a term for electronic junk: "slop".
It is the name given to bizarre, nonsensical content made with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that confuses, misleads, or slows people down during searches and research, for example. This can compromise decisions and cause an enormous waste of human energy.
More than a new concept in the digital world, it is a warning for companies. We tend to think that AI will only make things better, making companies more modern, productive, competitive... Not necessarily.
“Slop” is concrete evidence that AI can also create bad or simply useless things. More and more, we will stumble upon unnecessary or inappropriate digital content, and this will increasingly affect companies' day-to-day operations.
Before adopting the technology, we need to adjust our mindset. AI can bring many advantages, but also a lot of noise. It is management's role to ensure that new technologies are incorporated with clear purposes, and do not become sources of new problems.
Broadly speaking, we need to find ways for AI to make human life easier and contribute to creating things that are useful to society. Inside companies, the challenge is to ensure that the new technology is directed toward improving the customer experience, maximizing value delivery, and reducing unnecessary effort.
The fundamental basic thinking must regard AI as a means of simplifying processes, structuring agile and robust workflows, in order to increase productivity and improve the quality of products and services.
AI can be a valuable ally in identifying errors, failures, and defects at different stages of the process. It can also considerably increase our capacity to drive improvements and solve problems within organizations.
By considering these assumptions before implementation, we increase our chances of making good use of the new technology. The investments are, most of the time, quite significant. Therefore, we need to make sure we will have a positive impact on the customer and the business. And not merely expand our capacity to produce “slop”.
