AI has dramatically increased the volume of contributions to open source projects. While this lowers barriers to entry, it has also created a new strain on maintainers: pull requests scaling faster than human judgment and unsustainable review capacity. The result is rising cognitive load, burnout, and declining long-term project health.

This talk explores how AI-generated code is changing the shape of open source contribution. Rather than positioning AI as the problem, we'll introduce maintainer-first principles for the AI era, including treating code review as a boundary rather than a rubber stamp, prioritizing intent and explainability over raw output, and using AI to amplify human discernment instead of replacing it.