Originally Published 5 months ago — by Hacker News
The article discusses how AI and large language models are transforming the web and online communities, leading to declines in traditional platforms like Stack Overflow and Reddit, raising concerns about the future of knowledge sharing, community, and the quality of information. It highlights issues such as gatekeeping, content gatekeepers, the impact of AI on search and content discovery, and the potential for AI to both kill and revive aspects of the web, while also touching on societal and economic implications.
Stack Overflow is launching OverflowAPI, allowing AI companies like Google to access its knowledge base to enrich Gemini for Google Cloud. The partnership aims to bring AI-powered features to Stack Overflow and integrate Stack Overflow into the Google Cloud console. The ultimate vision is for humans and AI to work together to provide trustworthy answers. Google will also use the partnership to enhance its code completion model, Codey.
Stack Overflow, the coding help forum, has laid off 28 percent of its staff as it struggles towards profitability. The company had doubled its employee base last year, with a significant portion of the hires being for its go-to-market sales team. The layoffs come amidst a generative AI boom in the tech industry, which has posed challenges for a personal coding help forum like Stack Overflow. The company had previously issued a temporary ban on users generating answers with the help of an AI chatbot, leading to a months-long strike among moderators. Stack Overflow also announced that it would start charging AI companies to train on its site.
Stack Overflow, an online community for software coders, has experienced a decline in traffic since the release of powerful AI models like GPT-4, which were partly trained on Stack Overflow's freely available data. This trend raises concerns about the future of online forums and the availability of human data for AI training. Stack Overflow's CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, is responding by exploring ways to charge tech companies for using their data and engaging in conversations with large companies. The outcome of Stack Overflow's response has broader implications for businesses that rely on posting and hosting free information online, as well as the quality of AI models in the future.
Stack Overflow, the popular resource for programmers, plans to charge AI developers for access to its data as early as this year, following in the footsteps of Twitter and Reddit. AI companies like OpenAI scrape the internet for data to train their technology, and have mainly been able to do so for free until now. The move comes as the conversation surrounding the ethics of training AI picks up steam.
