From Business Insider · Ben Shimkus · · 1m 10s
Shopify CEO warns AI is creating more work, not less
Tobias Lütke says employees use AI to quickly produce low-quality work that burdens colleagues instead of helping them.
In brief
Tobias Lütke says employees use AI to quickly produce low-quality work that burdens colleagues instead of helping them. AI's real value comes from making thinking clearer and more responsible, not from generating more content faster. Originally reported by Business Insider.
AI isn't always making work easier
Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke says AI helps employees produce more material quickly, but without checking if it's useful or correct. This creates problems for everyone.
Meet the 'slop grenades'
Lütke calls low-quality AI outputs 'slop grenades' that people toss at each other. Someone might send a long AI-written email, forcing the recipient to use another AI tool just to summarize it.
“We call those 'slop grenades' that people toss at each other. And that's definitely a bad thing.”
The compression problem
The cycle of AI-generated content requiring AI summarization is wasteful. Lütke asks: 'Why did we invent decompression and recompression? This is terrible.'
“Why did we invent decompression and recompression? This is terrible.”
Shopify's own AI success
Shopify has embraced AI aggressively, rolling out tools for agents. Internally, the company's AI agent River handles possibly half of all production code pull requests.
When AI actually adds value
AI is most valuable when it makes people's thinking clearer and more concise. It's least valuable when it adds low-quality work to a coworker's desk.
“Humans take responsibility. Machines can help us take more responsibility because they can inform us better.”
The takeaway
AI's real value comes from making thinking clearer and more responsible, not from generating more content faster.
