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.
That’s the part about the painful process I mentioned. The dumb masses were always dumb and they will be the last to adapt. We’re in the Programming community and therefore might be a little earlier, as tech people are often early adopters of new ideas. I mean, the fact that you are using Lemmy is a sign that you want to try something more progressive, while most of the general public are happy with X, Instagram and Reddit.