Published on LinkedIn, Substack and AmitabhApte.com on 5th Oct, 2025
This week in AI – When Automation meets Dilution
Generative AI promised efficiency; what we got instead is workslop, a flood of machine-made noise now cluttering the modern workplace.
Recently, WSJ, HBR, and NYT all examined the same phenomenon: from hyper-realistic short films produced by OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes to ChatGPT authored memos filling inboxes, AI is shaping what we read, watch, and even believe often with unintended consequences.
HBR calls it workslop: the avalanche of low-value, high-volume output that leaves humans tidying up after the machines meant to save us time. Instead of freeing us to think, many generative tools have made us editors of synthetic clutter. The real risk isn’t inefficiency; it’s the slow erosion of trust, creativity, and clarity.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, Sam Altman is chasing trillion-dollar data-centre partnerships across East Asia and the Middle East, a quest to secure the world’s compute future. It’s a striking paradox: as AI’s physical footprint expands, its cognitive one risks dilution. We’re scaling servers faster than discernment.
My Takeaway This Weekend
AI won’t replace human work, it’s redefining what good work means. The next advantage won’t come from faster output, but from deeper understanding. In an age of AI slop, clarity is the new currency. The leaders who will win aren’t those automating the most, but those teaching their teams how to think with AI, not merely through it.
Beyond AI: My mindshare – Tom Hanks on Desert Island Discs
This week I listened to Desert Island Discs with Tom Hanks, a quiet masterclass in humility and humanity. He spoke of “the loneliness of a vagabond childhood,” and how even success can echo with silence. It reminded me that creativity isn’t born from abundance but from attention. Hanks found his voice not through noise, but through reflection; by turning the vocabulary of loneliness into empathy.
In a world racing toward noise, that half hour felt like a pause, a reminder that clarity, connection, and craft will always outlast speed.
Amitabh Apte 