I'm not going to pretend I know anything about the process, but it seems like an archaic solution to a modern problem. If you're going to maintain such a hardline stance against AI, then just auto-reject every story that scores above a certain probability of AI-usage. I don't think talking about this is productive though. The impression I've gotten is that this site hasn't adapted particularly well over the years.Engagement is low here - if you mean comments and votes. But views elsewhere are a joke. You might as well set up your own blog.
Nope - viable as in having people actually read your story.
I also have no idea what can be considered a viable reader-count as I'm fairly new, and only write niche content. However, the story I tried to upload here (probably around a week ago, got rejected yesterday), has already received about 20,000 views altogether on the other sites I uploaded to. Take that with a grain of salt, as I know bots are pretty prevalent everywhere.