AI can cheaply fake almost every signal we traditionally used to judge quality. I now see this pattern everywhere, in open source, in education, in research, all breaking at the same time. I find signaling theory useful for diagnosing what is happening and why it is so disorienting, and signaling theory and adjacent literature can provide the vocabulary to discuss possible solutions.
You can’t just live in plato’s cave and hope that the shadows on the wall are well-written code. But there will be a lot of people who try.