Social pressure affects behavior, but that doesn't happen if we all automatically jump up and down waving pompoms the moment anything looks anti-AI.

More like an era of lowered expectations. We used to trust published information more than say, backyard fence gossip, because publications had an aura of authority, that in general was justified because they were competing for reputation. With publishing essentially available now to people who in the past would have been fence gossipers, and a general lack of quality control, the overall trust level is lower.

Still, even though google now uses AI by default, I just googled "square root of 169" and it said 13, which I know to be the truth and not "AI slop". Life is full of paradoxes.