Definition
AI-generated work that looks polished but carries little substance, so the effort the sender saved is pushed onto whoever receives it. The team-level pattern that cognitive debt and power user fatigue produce in one worker.
What is at stake
Around 40 percent of workers received it in the last month, at a self-reported cost near 186 dollars per person per month. The sender's productivity gain was real. It was moved rather than created.
Where the word came from
- Slop as internet vernacular for low-quality generated contentin circulation from 2022
- WorkslopNiederhoffer, Rosen Kellerman, Lee and Hancock, 2025, which measured the transfer
How episcope came to it
The workslop survey, 22 September 2025. A vendor survey with a university lab attached.
What to watch for
The article calls it an invisible tax. That sits close to episcope's cognitive tax without being the same claim, since one describes a transfer between people and the other a cost inside one person.
Papers behind it
Niederhoffer, K., Rosen Kellerman, G., Lee, A., & Hancock, J. T. (22 September 2025). AI-Generated ‘Workslop’ Is Destroying Productivity. Harvard Business Review.