The Professionals Cleaning Up AI Slop

Brian Lehrer (0:09)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC will end today by opening up the phone lines to ask this question. How much of your job now is spent fixing what artificial intelligence got wrong? How much of your job now is spent fixing what artificial intelligence got wrong? Tell us a story about that, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I am told that this applies largely to graphic designers. So hello, graphic designers who have to fix AI slop, and also to attorneys. So hello, attorneys who have to fix AI slop. I'll read an interesting text from a lawyer in a minute to this point. But in any field, with the rise of generative AI, more and more individuals and small business owners are producing their own first draft of a logo, a contract, an article, or a video without hiring the professionals who they may have hired in the past, but then hiring someone else to fix it. Because what they come up with through AI is not quite usable in the pure form. So are you having to spend more time cleaning up AI slop in any line of work?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Call or text with your cleaning up AI slop for a living or part of your living story. Here's how, by the way, AI slop is defined on Wikipedia, if you don't know the term yet. Digital content made with generative artificial intelligence that is perceived as lacking in effort, quality or meaning, and usually produced in high volume to gain advantage to earn money or to deceive people. So there's a definition of AI slop. Here's this text we got during a different segment about AI, and it is one of the reasons we're doing this segment. Listener wrote, I'm a tech lawyer and former software developer with decades of experience in tech on both sides. AI has overwhelmed the practice of law, in spite of frequently being confidently wrong, risking the confidentiality of clients' information, same for attorney-client privilege, among other things. The worst problem, this lawyer writes, is when clients think that their use of AI to analyze or draft an agreement will save me time, and therefore expect me to lower my fee. Ha! I explain why that's not so. I now have language in my engagement agreement explaining all this. I don't see AI taking work from skilled, experienced attorneys for quite a while, if ever. Very interesting text from a lawyer there, right? So other lawyers listening, or really anybody in any field, does that resonate with you? Tell us your cleaning up AI slop for part of your living these days story. 212-433-WNYC-433-9692. Here's one more. This is from The Guardian. Headline is, freelancers are getting buried with soulless AI slop cleanup. Quote, it's a shame we need to do it, quoting a freelancer. This is about like the quality of freelance work, cleaning up AI slop versus actually generating the material. Stories by Aaron Mock and The Guardian, he talked to freelancers who say the nature of their gigs has flipped. Instead of being hired to create a logo or an illustration from scratch, they're hired to fix one. An AI agent already generated, sharpening blurry files, correcting extra fingers, out, rewriting robotic prose. You get the idea. So if you're a lawyer, if you're a graphic designer, if you're anyone else, what aspects of your job, how much of your job now is cleaning up AI slop? Tell us your stories to 1-2-4-3-3, WNYC 433-9692.

Call or text. We'll see what you have right after this.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Okay, your stories of your job now including cleaning up AI slop. Craig in New Orleans, you're on WNYC. Hi, Craig.

Craig (4:47)

Oh, thanks for taking my call. Yeah, I was telling the screener, as I was listening to this, I am actually doing contract work with Mercor, which is one of these companies that contract with the big AI labs. And I was just working on a task, evaluating nine slides that had the same prompt, and trying to make the determination of which one looks the least to the most AI, written and produced, and then detailing the specifics around punctuation, bad language, or vague language, things that sound too flowery. And it's a little confusing at times because everything starts looking similar when you are working on the same task.

It does provide some good insight into how these organizations are trying to clean it up and make it look more human-like.

Brian Lehrer (5:46)

Interesting Craig. Thank you for starting us off. Here's a lawyer, Robert and Montclair. You're on WNYC. Hi Robert.

Craig (5:55)

Hi.

Brian Lehrer (5:58)

That's a story. Go ahead.

Craig (5:59)

So, you know, I heard the reading from the tech before from the other lawyer, and I have a lot of the same problems. Clients will send you memos and saying, here's something to get your lawyer pointed in the right direction, and it just creates more work. It's not helpful. Just the hallucinations in cases is one thing, or they cite to a case that doesn't say what it says that the AI says, but just, and also I was telling the screener, you'll send something to the client to review, they'll have AI review, send it back, which is useless, and then the client doesn't review, so they don't absorb it, and you have to call up and say, no, I just wanted you to answer the questions that I had in Yellow Highlight or that I had a blank for.