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Generative AI is having a dramatic impact on many industries, including software development.
In a revealing snapshot of the global software development ecosystem, developer knowledge platform Stack Overflow is out today with a new report that exposes a nuanced interplay between AI and the coding community.
Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey is based on responses from more than 65,000 developers across 185 countries. The survey offers key insights into the evolving tech landscape, focusing on gen AI and its impact on developers. Stack Overflow itself is no stranger to the world of gen AI. Stack Overflow has its own set of tools, including OverflowAI to help developers.
Among the key findings in Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey:
- AI tool usage among developers increased to 76% in 2024, up from 70% in 2023
- Despite increased usage, AI favorability decreased from 77% to 72%
- Only 43% of respondents trust the accuracy of AI tools
- 81% of developers cite increased productivity as the top benefit of AI tools
- Misinformation emerges as the top AI-related ethical concern (79%)
A surprising finding was that 70% of professional developers don’t see AI as a threat to their jobs.
“Although we at Stack Overflow have been vocal about the fact that AI tools should help create more opportunities for developers – given the economic climate of late, I was expecting responses to be closer to 50/50,” Erin Yepis, senior analyst, market research and insights, told VentureBeat.
Why gen AI isn’t going to replace developers anytime soon
The fear from some that gen AI might replace developers is actually somewhat misplaced. What might actually be the case is that gen AI is increasing the number of developers rather than reducing the need for them.
“We believe that generative AI will democratize coding and grow the developer community by several folds,” Ryan Polk, Chief Product Officer at Stack Overflow told VentureBeat. “If there are 20-25 million developers now, this could lead to a 10x growth of this important group.”
Polk noted that gen AI coding tools can help developers in their day-to-day efforts. He sees it as a “Better Together” approach in terms of gen AI development tools and sites like Stack Overflow. For example, Polks said that AI-code completion and generator tools paired with deep context and knowledge tools like Stack Overflow provide a powerful combination. He believes AI-powered code generators will reduce time spent on boilerplate code, letting developers focus on complex problems.
“While gen AI tools can complement the resources available to developers, only Stack Overflow’s community expertise with accurate and sourced content complements these tools and is an invaluable resource for coding teams,” Polk said.
The flow of information from Stack Overflow to gen AI works both ways. Users can come to Stack Overflow to get answers and Stack Overflow partners with leading AI vendors to help train models. Among Stack Overflow’s partnerships is one with Google Cloud which was announced in February. Another key partnership for Stack Overflow emerged in May with OpenAI.
Why developers have a less favorable view of gen AI this year
Among the declining statistics in the 2024 report is a metric on favorability. In 2023, 77% of respondents had a favorable view of gen AI developer tools, which fell to 72% in 2024.
Yepis explained that favorability is top-box grouping for the Likert scale question of “How favorable is your stance on using AI tools as part of your development workflow?”
“Our hypothesis is that more people are getting a chance to try gen AI tools and are disappointed in their experience,” Yepis said. “Context is key, there is nuance in the type of role and the type of AI tool that could be contributing to this.”
A lack of trust in gen AI developer tools was another top-level finding in the report. This ties into the well-known issue of AI hallucination, which is a significant concern for developers.
Polk noted that attribution and the ability to decipher context continue to be issues for users. From this year’s survey, the top three ethical issues related to AI that developers are concerned with: AI’s potential to circulate misinformation (79%), missing or incorrect attribution for sources of data (65%) and bias that does not represent a diversity of viewpoints (50%).
“Gen AI is only as good as its data, garbage in, garbage out,” he said. “The truth is key for AI models.”
In Polk’s view, Stack Overflow and its users have a role to play in helping to overcome trust issues. He noted that Stack Overflow believes engaged developers and shared answers from a community will ensure AI’s future success. Polk emphasized that user trust in data, technology, and community knowledge is crucial amid misinformation in gen AI solutions.
“This is at the heart of why Stack has been focused on our OverflowAPI partnerships with AI and cloud companies to responsibly share content from Stack Overflow for various AI and [large language model] LLM use cases,” Polk said. “Our goal with OverflowAPI, and our work to advance the era of socially responsible AI, is to set new standards with vetted, trusted, and accurate data that will be the foundation on which technology solutions are built and delivered to our users.”
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