AI coding tools are shifting the bottleneck in open source from code generation to code review.
ACM research shows AI is flooding projects with PRs, but human maintainers still need to review every single one. Most projects can't scale their review capacity to match the flood of AI-generated contributions.
The problem: AI massively increases output, but review bandwidth stays constant. Projects are drowning in PRs that still need human judgment for quality, security, and architectural fit.
This isn't about AI writing bad code—it's about the mismatch between generation speed and human review capacity. Open source maintainer burnout is about to get way worse.
ACM research shows AI is flooding projects with PRs, but human maintainers still need to review every single one. Most projects can't scale their review capacity to match the flood of AI-generated contributions.
The problem: AI massively increases output, but review bandwidth stays constant. Projects are drowning in PRs that still need human judgment for quality, security, and architectural fit.
This isn't about AI writing bad code—it's about the mismatch between generation speed and human review capacity. Open source maintainer burnout is about to get way worse.