Good work, bad work, and fakes are increasingly hard to tell apart. Signaling theory explains why, and why small fixes are not enough.

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.