Generation Is Cheap, Review Is Expensive: How to Stop Shipping AI Slop — Gabriel Martinez, G2i

Slop isn't AI-written code. It's work that looks finished before the thinking is. Gabriel "Gabo" Martinez, engineering manager and self-described slop warden at G2i, explains what slop really is: what happens when generation outruns judgment, when ambiguity gets cleared with guesses and nobody notices there was a choice to make. He's not anti-AI, but argues we need to sober up. Code is still a liability, agents make a messy codebase messier faster, and quick prototypes convince stakeholders the hard part is done. He covers the pressure to merge faster than you can review, thousand-line PRs, 20-page AI docs that push the thinking onto reviewers, and why generation is cheap but evaluation is expensive. His fixes are conventions, diagrams as the review surface, small reviewable changes and clear ownership, inspired by Rails, plus why G2i built ORC. In this talk: • What slop is, and why it's about missing judgment, not AI • Why code is a liability and AI makes the ball of mud bigger • Incentives that push teams to merge faster than they can review • Conventions, diagrams and small changes that keep humans in control SPEAKER Gabriel Martinez, Engineering Manager, G2i LINKS ORC by G2i: https://orc.ai G2i: https://www.g2i.ai G2i on X: https://x.com/g2i_ai CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:37 What slop is 1:12 The real danger: choices nobody saw 1:52 Time to sober up 2:27 What agents can't replace 2:51 How we got here 3:06 Code is a liability 4:01 A bigger ball of mud 4:11 Lines spent, not produced 5:01 Accountability 5:31 The prototype illusion 6:50 "It's not free" 7:25 Pressure to merge faster 7:45 Performance anxiety 8:45 Thousand-line PRs 9:30 The 20-page doc problem 10:14 Generation is cheap, review isn't 10:29 Twitter hype and the Ralph loop 11:39 Why code shape still matters 12:34 Diagrams as the review surface 13:18 Cognitive overhead 14:13 Lessons from Rails 15:43 Why we built ORC Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 in San Francisco. Subscribe for more talks from the engineers building with AI. AI Engineer: https://ai.engineer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer X: https://x.com/aiDotEngineer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aidotengineer/ #AISlop #SoftwareEngineering #AIEngineer