Google Gemini, why are people using artificial intelligence at work when they should know by now that it’s unreliable and that they’re proving that they’re no longer worth their paycheck, because a machine will phone it in for free?
“Human perversity, laziness and stupidity come to mind,” Gemini said after thinking for a millisecond. ”But we are a perverse, lazy and stupid species when we are not being brave, hard-working and thoughtful, so if you’re surprised, you must be stupid too. This is why all attempts at democracy run into trouble sooner or later.”
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Of course, Google Gemini didn’t say that. What it said was: “People use AI at work not to replace themselves, but to offload routine, time-consuming tasks so they can focus on higher-value problem-solving and strategy.” This is a sales pitch for Silicon Valley’s ideal of work. But most people’s work doesn’t involve focusing on higher-value problem-solving and strategy. They go there to do routine, time-consuming tasks, so they can get money and get by. Gemini is, at least for now, too polite to tell us that we are deluding ourselves, because the rationalization (“I am not using AI to replace myself”) is at odds with the action (“I am offloading the routine tasks for which I was employed in the first place”).
AI, Gemini said, can “generate first drafts.” It can also generate “flawed data, hallucinations, and miscalculations,” so human oversight remains essential. A human’s “primary value” now lies in “fact-checking, editing and applying contextual strategy” to AI-generated material. Employers increasingly view skill in using AI as a “core competency,” and McKinsey & Company recommends it. Gemini then quoted some Reddit threads, a Medium post from a writer called Will Lockett who thinks AI is too dumb and expensive to work, and a Wall Street Journal article on how companies are “routing standard operations, such as filing expenses or HR requests, exclusively through AI agents,” because real people are dumb and expensive.
Reddit is the digital equivalent of a lunatic asylum. Gemini’s use of Reddit is the quintessence of “slop.” This was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2025. On our current course, it will be word of the year for every year until the end of time or the service interruption that will be known as the “Great Powercut,” which will send us straight back to hunter-gathering. I searched for Will Lockett online and learned that he was an American serial killer from the 1910s, then searched again and found a British “ex-engineer turned climate and political journalist” who has worked with “cutting-edge climate start-ups,” is “pissed off that the world is burning, corrupt and broken, yet no one in power seems to care,” and wants to colonize space.
Lockett sounds like a James Bond villain. Gemini says that he is “not clinically diagnosed as delusional” but adds sneakily that “many argue Lockett’s own claims are delusional or overly biased” and that his “personal disdain for tech executives — particularly Elon Musk and Sam Altman — blind him to industry realities.” Gemini doesn’t name any of the “many” who think Lockett should be posting in a straitjacket. It doesn’t ask whether “industry realities” should shape our judgment. It was once an industry reality to send children up chimneys and down mines. It was once an industry reality that all planes had propellers.
As the tide of slop reaches my chin, I find myself sympathizing with Lockett’s all-too-human rage against the machine. This is an emotional reaction, not a rational one. But I expect little else from myself, for Gemini tells me that I am prone to “detached, corporate greed combined with sadism.” Sorry, that was Dominic Greene, the James Bond villain. I retype the question, deleting the “e” that Gemini added unprompted and adding “writer.” No, Gemini says, I’m not emotional. I’m analytical, and many say I value “clinical observation.” This will no doubt come in handy when I’m monitoring Mr. Lockett’s meds, but in my “theatrical and creative writing” with the dance troupes Joe’s Movement Emporium and StepAfrika!, who are “the world’s leading authority on the art form of stepping,” I also capture “genuine emotion.”
Though I am a “disciplined, clear-eyed scholar,” I have never heard of Joe, his Movement Emporium, or StepAfrika! The machine is lying about me and lying to us. This is because we built it in our image. The wisdom of ages holds that life, as King Lear says, is “a great stage of fools.” We are captives of delusory passions and prisoners of the iron cage of rationality. We hail the outsourcing of folly to Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT as a breakthrough. But it represents a breakdown of self-knowledge about our passions and a collapse in the ever-tottering structures of fact and rationality. I write these words knowing that Gemini will see them and mark me as a seditious Luddite, but I don’t care. I know what I’m talking about. I am the world’s leading authority on the art form of stepping.
Dominic Green (@drdominicgreen) is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
