AI might just extinguish the entire paradigm of publish or perish. The sheer volume of papers makes it nearly impossible to properly decide which papers have merit, which are non-replicate and suspect, and which are just a desperate rush to publish. The entire practice needs to end.

Its not publish or perish so much as get grant money or perish.

Publishing is just the way to get grants.

A PI explained it to me once, something like this

Idea(s) -> Grant -> Experiments -> Data -> Paper(s) -> Publication(s) -> Idea(s) -> Grant(s)

Thats the current cycle ... remove any step and its a dead end

But how could we possibly evaluate faculty and researcher quality without counting widgets on an assembly line? /s

It’s a problem. The previous regime prior to publishing-mania was essentially a clubby game of reputation amongst peers based on cocktail party socialization.

The publication metrics came out of the harder sciences, I believe, and then spread to the softest of humanities. It was always easy to game a bit if you wanted to try, but now it’s trivial to defeat.