No More Slop – swyx

Channel: aiDotEngineer

Published at: 2025-12-22

YouTube video id: IoiHI7p12Ao

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoiHI7p12Ao

[music]
morning. How's everyone doing?
>> Good.
>> I'm going to need a lot of energy for
this talk, so please back me up. I'm
very nervous. Uh but we'll get through
this. I'm declaring war on slop today.
Let's talk about this. Every AIE has a
secret. I I've told this to uh some
folks that are personal friends and I'll
just show show the secret. Now the first
summit we had the secret which was we
knew that the AI engineer was going to
be a thing. Second summit we extended it
to leadership. Third summit we realized
that basically we always needed to
concentrate on model labs and that's why
you see um all all the all the top tier
labs here today um world's fair we
started expanding the TAM of of what AI
engineering uh is is affiliated with
with AIPMs and AI designers and with the
code summit as Jed just talked about we
really started focus on curation and
focusing in on a theme and if there's
one theme that's really matters this
year is it's coding but I'm not here to
talk about coding the rest of the day
you're going to hear about coding. So
just just indulge me 5 minutes to talk
about slop.
Um we we've done really well, right?
Like so so like I think like slop is
sort of associated with quantity and
quality. And I think like that's
something that I'm really trying to
think about as well like how do we grow
this community, grow this industry and
grow this event uh with the the same
kind of taste and high quality that
you've come to expect. And this is
something that, you know, I hope
hopefully you guys can see that we care
a lot about uh in curating all of you
coming here and all of the speakers that
you're about to see. Um we're in a war
against slop. Um this is actually uh the
Oxford English dictionary. Uh this is a
a candidate for the 2024 word of the
year. It lost to brain rot. [laughter]
But um but slop is slop is pretty good.
And I think it's it's probably gone even
more of an issue this year than last
year. Maybe it will win this year. I
have an issue with Oxford though because
they did us dirty by saying slop is is
generated using artificial intelligence.
The other part I I agree with. It's
lowquality, inauthentic or inaccurate.
But it doesn't take AI to be lowquality,
inauthentic or inaccurate.
Any human or AI can be an agent of slop,
right? You've seen this yourself. I'm
going to indulge me over a few examples.
By the way, I got this uh if you're not
familiar with like sort of internet
slang, the opposite of slop is kino. Um
and I got this idea from Paul Rambles
who uh like you know when I do Sora
videos, I do really boring Sora videos
with me and Sam Holman. When other
people who are actually creative and
good at their job do Sora videos, they
do cats playing digs.
Uh slot can be produced by the same
studio. There's K-pop demon hunters by
Netflix and there's electric st by
Netflix.
Slav can be produced in terms of
different models. No comment.
Slav can be SLO can something that's
keyno can degenerate into SLO, right? If
you're early on the trend and you're and
you you're starting that and it's and
it's fresh and new and that's great. U
if you're if you recognize the other
image, you're too online.
[clears throat] Okay, not enough people
recognize that image. Um go do your
homework. Um yeah, and obviously I'm
just going to throw in a dig at Game of
Thrones because this is the same same
thing, right? Like slop is everywhere.
It's generated by humans and AI. You get
it? [clears throat]
Okay. Um the same startup idea can be
keen versus slop. When I first presented
the my first keynote at AI engineer
summit, we actually used to uh which is
sort of like an AI slides company. Uh I
loaded I loaded up the same slide deck
and it was gone uh recently because uh
it was it was actually uh sort of uh
closed as a company. Um there's there's
you know different takes on vibe coding
and I think one of them uh is much
better than the other and I think like
this these are just like the tensions
that we have to navigate. um one of our
speakers later on as well meter. Um I
think it's really interesting that both
of them are exponential charts but one
of them feels more keeno and the other
is more slops and I think like I would
really like to have people investigate
why um so let let me let me just skip
through basically we're in an asymmetric
war and slop um I think u the closest
law that I found that matches this is
Brandolini's law which actually states
the amount of energy needed to refuel
is an order of magnitude bigger
than needed to produce it. Right. So we
need to co coin an appropriate law as
well. Um because you know like the the
the cost of generating tokens is is
dropping by 100 to a thousand times
every single year.
Um so this is I guess Fix's law of
anti-slav the amount of taste needed to
fight SLO is in order manually bigger
than that needed to produce it. Right?
There's so much low taste out there. We
need to elevate uh what's out there in
the world because that's what we stand
for as humans. Um, I think there's
there's a positive message. You can use
AI to fight slop. Um, I'm proud I'm
proud to run as a side project AI news,
which is the only newsletter that tells
you not to read it when there's nothing
going on. Thank [laughter] you. Oh,
appreciate that. Um, you can also prompt
SLO. The next speaker is um Mahash and
Barry. Um I found this in the in the
sort of prompt in the in the skill set
that they that they put they put where
they actually acknowledge slop and tell
cloud not to produce slop and it
actually improves significantly from
left to right. Um what about code slop
right we hear about code um creating
tech where you can sort of two engineers
can create a tech debt of 50 engineers
or you know on a more serious note you
can start exposing private data of
millions of users and this this all
happened this year. Everything I'm
mentioning all happened this year. I'm
kind of using this keynote as a as a way
of recapping. Um, and it, you know, just
to be spicy a little bit, even people
who are saying things like, "Oh, my
model can go up to 30 to 60 hours uh
autonomously." Well, it feels a bit
sloppy because you're also not saying,
"Well, was the code good or not?" You're
just saying how long it went. So, in the
same way that you have no taxation
without representation, you don't want
autonomy without accountability.
Um something I've been working on more
recently is that using AI to fight code
slop as well. So uh this is from the a
bunch of people quoted this yesterday of
the semi-ync value of death where you
can sort of keep human attention and
mind meld with the machine in order to
work on the hardest problems whereas the
stuff that's commoditized you can make
it more async. So you can check out more
on that details. What seems to be less
appreciated is my is the other work on
code maps uh which I which I more
recently done where we actually use AI
to scale codebased understanding which
is also a a way to fight slop and you
can uh talk to the cognition folks uh
downstairs uh um who who can who can
show you more in detail. Um the the last
thing I always want to shout out as well
is is this trend of uh computer use. I
think computer use kind of debuted it
this time last year uh with Enthropic.
But uh it's it's getting really really
good now guys. It can really
autonomously operate the most complex
apps including an ID. So I think that's
really uh exciting and you should
probably use that to fight slot. We use
it for the website and here's an example
of us using Devon to automate the the
sort of website up website updates. Um
and finally something I learned from
this conference yesterday is that you
can also use sub agents to fight context
rot. Um and I think that is one of the
biggest themes of of uh that I'm
observing as well. If you want to take
away something from this conference
um and I also one of the biggest
highlights of the year for us as AIE and
myself personally was chatting with Greg
Brockman who always uh preaches the
concept of modularity where you can sort
of keep clear boundaries on what is
human designed and let the AI code
everything in between. Um, so these are
all ideas, but I just have this one
message that I want to comp compress
down to you today that I want you to say
with me. No more slop. Yeah.
Your boss tells you, "I want more lines
of code in by the end of the quarter."
What do you say to that? Say it with me.
No more slop.
>> You're fighting an asymmetric war. This
is how bad it is, right? You have an
insufficiently tested release that that
is potentially embarrassing to your
company. What do you say to people who
really want to push it?
>> No more slop. Exactly. [laughter]
Uh your your Twitter algorithm wants
engagement bait uh and is sort of you
know forced and telling you to to to lie
basically to the to the broad public.
What do you say to that?
>> Exactly. That's it. Uh I hope you have a
great conference and let's let's hear it
for uh not having any more stuff. Thank
you. Heat. Heat. [applause]
[music]