AI Impact: Stack Overflow Lays Off 28% Staff

Source:

Ars Technica
on
October 16, 2023
Curated on

October 25, 2023

Stack Overflow, a trusted site for many developers' coding inquiries, is facing competition from AI chatbots like ChatGPT. Due to the real-time, code-specific assistance that these bots can provide, they have started to outshine previous resources for developers. The fact that code can be immediately validated by testing it within an integrated development environment (IDE) makes bots ideally positioned for this task. Hence, sites like Stack Overflow find themselves in precarious positions. In fact, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar has announced that the company will be laying off 28% of its staff. The CEO of Stack Overflow maintains that the layoffs are part of a route to profitability, all while maintaining ongoing product innovation. Stack Overflow had previously announced its proposed solution to the rise of AI chatbots, 'Overflow AI', in a hope to rival ChatGPT. Interestingly, a large part of the prowess of these AI bots, including ChatGPT, comes from harnessing the data from forum sites like Stack Overflow. This raises serious questions about how sustainable it is for chatbots to consume this data without contributing back to the community. OpenAI, the brains behind ChatGPT, is considering web crawler controls which could allow sites like Stack Overflow to opt out from being crawled.

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