Where does the rigor go? Research software and the future of trustworthy science.

Generative AI now makes it dramatically easier to produce something that looks like research: analysis code, figures, literature reviews, even whole papers. The mechanisms research relies on to establish trust were built for a slower, human-paced enterprise, and they are struggling with the volume. Software got here first: this community has a two-year head start on questions the rest of research is only beginning to ask, and RSE work is already changing shape, away from writing code for researchers and toward specification, verification, and the judgment that makes AI-assisted work trustworthy. I'll share observations from my perspectives as a funder, a journal editor, and a long-time member of this community and offer some thoughts on where research software engineering goes next.