Academic Peer Reviewers - Reviewer Shortage & Self-Publishing Trends

I'm working on a story about how the peer review process is in a complete state of overwhelm. The situation seems to be worst in AI research. Here, the demand for reviewers outstrips the supply so severely that I've heard of early-year college students being tapped as reviewers. Some experienced researchers are giving up on the system entirely and self-publishing their work on blogs instead. I'm wondering how much the problem extends to other fields. If you have experiences in this realm, and you'd like to talk on the record, send me an email: [email redacted].