The sharpest point here is the contamination one. Once you know something is provable, the search for a more illuminating proof just... dies quietly. Nobody writes that paper beyond that point it seems.
The rest is real, but not new. Exposition and community building are always undervalued. AI just makes the failure faster and more visible.
What is it with Brits and digging tunnelsystems underneath their houses? William Lyttle ("The Mole Man of Hackney"), "I'm just a man who loves to dig".
My grandfather had a kind of similar situation in Genk, Belgium where he bought a house and discovered a whole basement system that spanned a good part of the neighborhood.
In my teens I had enjoyed a book series "Tunnels" by Roderick Gordon & Brian Williams. The story cranks the mole fantasy up to 12 & surprise, surprise... it is set in some london downtown.
Nice storytelling. I don't really like the stacked items from a UX-perspective as it's not clear how many items there are and content is hidden in this way.
The rest is real, but not new. Exposition and community building are always undervalued. AI just makes the failure faster and more visible.
The actual question is what behavior we reward.