An Endless Stream of AI Slop: The Burden of AI-Assisted Software Development

This arXiv paper qualitatively analyzes 1,154 Reddit and Hacker News posts to build a 15-code codebook on how developers perceive and respond to "AI slop" in software development, organized into Review Friction, Quality Degradation, and Forces and Consequences. The authors frame AI slop as a tragedy of the commons, where individual productivity gains externalize costs onto reviewers, maintainers, and the broader community. They report developers' concerns and proposed mitigation strategies, with implications for tool developers, team leads, and educators.