AI Normies and AI Slop: The Yin and Yang of AI Adoption at your Bank

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Corollary: If you don't know what AI Normie or AI Slop are, you are most probably a Normie.

What is AI Normie?

An AI Normie is Silicon Valley slang for people who use AI only in its most basic form, such as a replacement for search or casual interaction with ChatGPT. No prompt or context engineering, no MCP servers, no agents, no evals, no multimodal tools, nothing.

What is AI Slop?

AI Slop is not a person but an AI outcome: that moment when you or someone creates something with AI and it immediately becomes clear that it's AI-generated, either because it's a flop, uncanny, word salad, a long faceless video that conveys nothing, or an embarrassing failure like accidentally deleting someone's emails. This can happen not only because of hallucination, but simply because of a lack of judgment from the model, harness, or human using it.

• If you don't know what a Model or a Harness is, I have a follow up article about that too. For now the Model is the AI, the Harness is the software tool that you use to interact with the AI. Common examples in banking: gpt-5 is the Model, ChatGPT is a Harness, Copilot is another Harness.

Why do they Matter?

1. 95% of your team are AI Normies. That's true for 99.999% of Organizations Today. While this statement may not be statistically precise, the directional trend is clearly accurate.
2. AI Slop is a real issue that brings risk in banking, no matter how much AI vendors, early adopters, and futurists claim otherwise.
3. Because #1 and #2, yet AI is fundamental, You need to master both to gain the transformational benefits of AI.

So, What should I do?

#1 Not all AI Normies are created equal

When thinking about AI inside your team at the Bank, think about the Technology Adoption Lifecycle model by Everett Rogers. Use this to understand who and how they will Adopt AI, and how it will expand inside your Bank.

#2 The type of AI Slop risk depends on where and how you use AI

A few examples of AI Risks in banking are:

1. Underwriting: Credit Risk, Financial Risk, Compliance Risk
2. Compliance: Legal Risk.
3. Marketing Materials: Reputation and Compliance Risks.
4. Software Development: Information Security Risk, Reputation Risk.

Don't be afraid of AI Slop, manage it. Like you always do in Banking.

#3 The type of AI Normie affects how they perceive that Risk

Your Innovators won't even perceive the risk, your laggards will never accept any risk. This will dictate your speed for adopting AI, how you communicate AI with the person, and who you need to hire to make AI happen.

#4 AI Slop, as any risk, can be managed

There are different strategies to manage AI Slop and its associated risks a few ideas here:

1. Human in the Loop: Adding a human to do a final review / approval of the AI decision, content, etc… These can be mandatory or can be post depending on the task.
2. A better Harness: Some software vendors specialize in specific problems and add the proper guardrails, auditing, workflows to the tool.
3. Starting in Low to Medium Risk but high Reward situations

#5 Although AI Models are improving rapidly, AI Slop will always exist

There won't be the perfect model or the perfect tool, so waiting will only affect you and your Bank. The work you invest today will help you better benefit from the AI models and tools that emerge in the future.

In Conclusion

The duality of AI Normies and AI Slop isn't a problem to solve but a reality to manage. The question isn't whether your bank will adopt AI, your team is probably already using it, it's about where and whether you'll lead the adoption or follow it. Thoughtful experimentation will give you the edge.

How Linker Finance can help

Linker uses AI and provides AI Tools for banks in the areas of Operations, Marketing, Analytics, and Compliance so you can:

1. Acquire new customers and deposits
2. Serve your customers and scale your operation efficiently
3. Upsell and Cross-sell products

Curious on how we can help your bank? Please contact with the form below.