Slop cannons are a management problem

“Slop cannons.” I loved the term when I saw Ioan Iacob use it in a LinkedIn discussion about AI and management attention. It describes a familiar temptation: generate more because generating more has become easy.

Email made it easier to send a message. It also made it easier to send a message nobody needed. AI gives that same temptation a larger production budget.

For a leadership team, the problem becomes concrete when a longer report creates more checking, a polished presentation hides weak reasoning, or several versions of the same analysis arrive without a decision attached.

The recipient pays for the output

The author can produce a document quickly. The recipient still has to read it, test its claims and work out what to do. A local productivity gain can move work onto somebody else’s calendar.

Management should make that transfer visible. Ask for the decision the document supports, the evidence that matters and the judgment the author is prepared to defend. A report should arrive with an owner who understands it.

Set a useful standard for AI-assisted work: verify material claims, resolve obvious contradictions, remove repetition and make the requested action clear. The person circulating it owns its usefulness.

Use the capability to improve the thinking

I have seen successive technology waves expand what people can produce. My response to this one is to engage, experiment and develop the judgment to use it well.

Use an agent to challenge an argument, compare assumptions or find the missing information. Make it help you prepare a better decision. Giving colleagues more pages to inspect is an expensive way to demonstrate that the tool works.

The executive test is straightforward: after this output enters the organisation, does the next person have a better basis for action?

If the answer is unclear, keep working on it before firing the cannon.