Just a few days ago, OpenAI and Stack Overflow made a groundbreaking announcement when they decided to shake hands on an API-based partnership deal. This deal is proving beneficial to both OpenAI and Stack Overflow in their own desired ways. But it’s not a happy day for everyone.
While OpenAI will be able to improve its programming capabilities and Stack Overflow will be able to make use of the former’s AI-driven data for better platform optimization, some users have started deleting their sources from the platform to prevent them from being used by OpenAI for training,
So, What is Happening with the Deal?
A lot of members of the community believe that this deal will be the end of Stack Overflow. Some have highly criticized this convergence of AI and programming and considered its impact on software development.
Stack Overflow has been the number one platform for developers since 2008. The platform is full of talented coders who share their knowledge with aspiring developers and help them polish their skills in diverse aspects. More than 100+ million users benefit from Stack Overflow’s vast dataset on complex coding problems.
However, Generative AI has been on the rise for the last several years. AI has made its way into almost every sector around the world. Powerful LLMs in the market such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, Meta’s Llama 3, and Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus are coming to a threat for software developers jobs, as they can Code also.
Several developers have turned to these LLMs for their coding-related queries which involve debugging and auto-completing codes.
Stack Overflow has also felt the need to level up its AI game based on this AI uprise worldwide. This is one probable reason it signed a deal with OpenAI. Through this deal, Stack Overflow aims to utilize OpenAI’s AI-driven data to improve its Overflow API.
We know OpenAI is a very powerful LLM company out there, and its data can really help Stack Overflow improve its API efficiency. The AI-driven data and algorithms on which ChatGPT is built can highly leverage Stack Overflow’s platform to be more optimized and efficient while navigating.
However, even with these seeming benefits several users from the Stack Overflow community have protested against this deal. And, have made critical remarks such as Stack Overflow will ‘decline’. Why is this so? Let’s get into that.
Why is the Stack Overflow community protesting?
Even with the seeming benefits, developers noticed that ChatGPT is getting way more out of this deal if put on a level scale. Not only is the AI company getting access to top-notch coding related questions and answers to improve the programming capabilities of GPT models, but also it is narrowing down the gaps between LLMs and programming.
Many believe that OpenAI is already a highly powerful AI company and it is just an excuse to say that they want to improve their model ‘performance’ through this deal.
Another big reason that Stack Overflow coders have felt unhappy is that they want their answers to be cited by OpenAI when referenced. OpenAI currently displays source codes if you want any, but you probably won’t find any references or citations to where they were taken from.
This is why several users have taken down their programming questions and answers from the platform because they feel their authority has been neglected. They have demanded their sources not to be used by OpenAI for training it’s models and also if done, then mention the citations.
However, the tricky part comes here. Just over a year ago, Stack Overflow banned Generative AI content from being posted or used on its platform.
The ban was initially temporary but now it is permanent. So, many users have questioned Stack Overflow shaking hands with OpenAI, a company that highly promotes Generative AI in the first place.
Stack Overflow has recently banned users who have tried to delete their programming source codes to prevent it from being used by OpenAI have been either banned or suspended by the site moderators.
Ben, a Stack Overflow user, shared on Mastodon about his experience modifying his most popular answers in an attempt to prevent OpenAI from stealing his ideas. Not only were his deleted questions changed again by the Stack Overflow mods, but his account was also suspended for a week.
As a result of this mass ban, Stack Overflow has lost huge traffic in these past few days. Apart from the ban, several users have resigned from the platform as well. You can see the fall in traffic for Stack Overflow in this comparison with GitHub and ChatGPT.
So, it finally happened:
— Francesco (@FrancescoCiull4) May 7, 2024
StackOverflow announced its partnership (surrender?) with OpenAI.
I have mixed feelings about that and haven't used StackOverflow in a while, and it always seemed like a useful but toxic place, especially for beginners. pic.twitter.com/m5ZWsKY9lA
If Stack Overflow continues this ban policy, then it may continue to witness a similar direction in this trend, as it has been from 2022 and 2023.
Conclusion
Whenever a new announcement or a deal is made in such a trendy field as Generative AI and Programming, two things are certain, either a backlash or rapid growth. For now, this seems to be not going great for both OpenAI and Stack Overflow, more for the latter considering the loss in traffic and unhappiness from its community.
However, we must not forget that AI needs to learn as well from vast sources. Only then we can progress into the future where AI and Programming are collaborative. Let’s find out in the days to come, how this works!
