Developers make room for AI on their desks

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Stack Overflow website’s yearly survey of its large user community shows that 77% of developers favor using AI in their workflow, and 70% of them already use or plan to use AI-based tools starting this year. As to the quality of the results, they remain skeptical. A mere 3% responded that they “highly trust” the AI-based coding tools, while 39% said they “somewhat trust” them. For 33% of respondents, it’s about increasing productivity. Ninety thousand responses flooded in from 185 countries, according to Stack Overflow.

Meanwhile, Stack Overflow is trying to control the clutter of AI-generated content that’s choking out its own community-created knowledge database. In December, the company temporarily banned AI-generated content, only to backtrack in May. Some discontent within the user community sprouted up when the company announced it was leaving it to moderators to sort the wheat from the chaff.

⇨ The Verge, James Vincent, “Stack Overflow survey finds developers are ready to use AI tools — even if they don’t fully trust them.”

2023-06-13