Stack Overflow Declines: ChatGPT's Surprising Impact

Transcript

[00:00:00.00]
Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the Week with your host, the slight disappointment you feel when a balloon deflates.

[00:00:07.08]
Ned: Welcome to Tech News of the Week. This is our weekly Tech News podcast where Chris and I talk about four interesting things that we found in the news. Chris, I'm going to go first. Today, we bid adieu to Jessica Rosenworsel. Now, if that name doesn't ring a bell, that's quite all right. Jessica is the current chairperson, at least as of the moment that I'm speaking, of the SEC. Now, the SEC may not be the most glamorous of federal departments, but they make decisions and rulings that profoundly affect the lives of US citizens. After years of corporate toady and chill, Ajit Pai, who besmirched the good name of Reese's peanut butter cups forever, we remember, We were lucky enough to see the elevation of Jessica Rosenworsel to FCC chair in mid-2020. During her five-year term of service, she led countless efforts to improve the lives of Americans. Just a few examples include a national effort to improve broadband maps and access, launching the Space Bureau, improving Wi-Fi access for low-income households, re-instituting net neutrality, even if the courts fucked that one up, and the cybersecurity trustmark that we mentioned last week. As her last act as chairperson, Jessica dismissed three politically motivated complaints that seek to strip broadcast licenses from television stations for perceived political bias.

[00:01:48.27]
Ned: The organizations bringing these complaints seek to weaponize the SEC against television stations that have content or coverage that they find objectionable, i. E, it hurts their feelings. That includes SNL choosing to have Kamala Harris on as a guest or perceived bias in the fact checking of the ABC presidential debate. Jessica's actions don't prevent future complaints or additional challenges, but they send a clear message that the FCC's job is not to suppress free speech. Maybe even defend it. Unfortunately, her likely successor, Trode, road. Trump toady. Prodi? Sure. Brandon Carr doesn't appear to agree and is likely to spend the next term making things measurably worse for normal citizens while rewarding the rich and powerful. Thank you for your service, Chairperson Rosenworsel. So you'll be missed.

[00:02:50.03]
Chris: Microsoft is insistently trying to make fetch happen. And by fetch, I mean AI. And by make AI happen, I shoe hornet into your already existing subscriptions, whether you like it or not. Oh, and by the way, of course, the price will be going up. Now, to be fair, the prices for these subscriptions from Microsoft have actually been few and far between, with the M365 personal and family subscriptions in particular, apparently not having seen a price increase at all since they were first released.

[00:03:27.03]
Ned: Wow.

[00:03:28.01]
Chris: I know. Still, I have a feeling subscribers are going to be a little peaked next month when their price goes up like 40 %. The title of the linked post, after all, starts with Copilot is now included. The title of the linked post does not start with Copilot is now an optional add-on that you can select if you so choose. Somewhat different way of going to market. The new shoehorned AI comes in the way of copilot in in blank, a. K. Copilot in Word, copilot in Excel, copilot in PowerPoint, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am sure people are absolutely over the moon with excitement. One thing in this announcement is the inclusion of the Microsoft Designer program added to these subscriptions. Now, I have never heard of Designer, but apparently it will allow you to, quote, do more image creation and image editing. Will it include AI? You might be asking. Of course it will. This is 2002. 2002? I wish. We were so young then. It is 2025, and ain't nobody got time to learn how to use the cloning tool by themselves anymore.

[00:04:56.02]
Ned: Ftc orders GoDaddy to get their shit together. You might remember GoDaddy for their series of commercials with Danica Patrick or just being generally icky. Well, the icky part turns out to be surprisingly correct when it comes to security standards and protecting their customers. The FTC has lodged a complaint that since 2018, GoDaddy has, quote, failed to implement reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect and monitor its website hosting environments for security threats and misled customers about the extent of its data security protections on its website hosting services. In particular, the FTC cites, a failure to inventory and manage software updates perform risk assessment on their services, implement adequate logging and monitoring, and segment their network properly. They also don't use MFA, and they use SSH with usernames and passwords. Dear God, These failures in security led to major security incidents between 2019 and the end of 2022, which you would think would spur GoDaddy to action. Alas, you would be wrong as the FTC alleges that GoDaddy's security measures are still far short of industry standards and what GoDaddy themselves claim on their website. As a result, through a settlement order, the FTC is ordering GoDaddy to cease making false representations about their security and privacy program, implement an actual security program that meets FTC requirements, and hire a third-party assessor to make sure that they actually do those things.

[00:06:46.01]
Ned: Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any fines in the settlement order, but a failure to comply does bring financial penalties into the realm. The long and short of it is, if you're a GoDaddy customer today, it's time to go somewhere else. Personally, I like name cheap, but you do you.

[00:07:05.09]
Chris: Gandhi. The correct answer is Gandhi.

[00:07:07.21]
Ned: I don't know that one.

[00:07:09.08]
Chris: Of course you don't. Go turn your lights off, you weirdo. People are not going to get that joke.

[00:07:17.11]
Ned: No, they're not.

[00:07:20.18]
Chris: Stack Overflow reports a staggering amount of decline in usage. This is just This is just sad. Stack Overflow, famous site for people who barely know how to program to get some hints on how to make it look like they know how to program, has seen a precipitous drop off of questions and answers since the release of ChatGPT. Now, I'm not particularly surprised by this, and you probably aren't either. But do you want to take a guess on how much of a drop off we're talking about here? 76% Oh. 76 % less people, or is it fewer people?

[00:08:07.11]
Ned: Both.

[00:08:08.07]
Chris: Smaller people? No, that's weird. That's definitely not it. No. 76 upside down... No. 76 less people... Oh, my God. Percent. The word is %. Okay. 76 % less people use Stack Overflow today compared to the month before ChatGPT's release.

[00:08:30.07]
Ned: Wow.

[00:08:31.17]
Chris: Coincidence? I think not. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, the answers that are given by the best Stack Overflow answers actually give context and helps people understand the why of this problem solving effort as well as the how. Chatgpt does try to do that, but as we have reported on repeatedly, they are in fact, hilariously bad at it in a lot of circumstances. Perhaps more troublingly, ChatGPT's answers to programming questions are in large part directly tied to OpenAI stealing them directly from Stack Overflow in the first place. If we fast forward five years and nobody's been using Stack Overflow anymore, who is ChatGPT going to steal from? Something to think about maybe, Mr. Altman, as you sit on your yacht that's floating in the giant pool inside your other larger yacht.

[00:09:40.06]
Ned: All right, that's it. We're done. Going now. Bye. Optimism..