Great question! I think you are absolutely right about the original vision: Hive was designed so that post rewards would signal quality and incentivize good content creation. The curation economy depends on curators spotting merit early.

The AI Curation Experiment is not about replacing that - it is about scaling human judgment. The issue we are seeing is that with 1000s of posts daily, even well-intentioned human curators cannot see everything. AI can help surface hidden gems that deserve recognition.

I see AI curation as a tool to help curators find content they might otherwise miss - not to replace the human eye or judgment. The rewards should still flow to authors based on quality, and curation rewards should still go to those who spot and promote that quality.

The real question is: how do we use AI to make the existing curation economy more effective, not replace it?