Most folks seem happy to let AI write their LinkedIn posts for them. Others, myself included, have AI draft their work memos or slide decks. And some, according to recent survey data highlighted by AI Secret, are happy to let AI do their grocery shopping for them (28%), but not handle luxury goods or banking (6%). In trying to uncover a guiding principle for when mere mortals are willing to cede control to robots, AI Secret’s authors offered a cutting interpretation of our willingness to buy food but not financial products through AI: “That ranking isn’t trust, it’s a map of what people have stopped caring about.”
While this feels true-ish, the “ish” is important. For example, based on the garbage we regularly wade through on LinkedIn, AI slop feels like an attempt to care about something we’re told we should care about, but don’t. If we did, we’d take the time to write it. Or maybe it’s simply an acknowledgment that many people don’t have the skill to write well, so they entrust AI to do it better than they could. (It doesn’t.)
Maybe it’s both. As for the willingness to shop for groceries, it’s not that we don’t care about the milk in our fridge—we clearly do—but perhaps we don’t care about how it gets there. We care about the outcome, in other words, but not the process.
