Empowering Developers: Stack Overflow's OverflowAI Announcement

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1:03drop around 30 to 40 percent since chat gpt launched so a lot of people are saying a lot of my developers on projects i work on or consult on included are saying they use chat gpt to help with consulting or to help with coding um because essentially this thing has sucked in all of stack overflow which is where they used to go and now instead of having to search through stack overflow um they can ask chat gpt questions and it can kind of customize the responses to what they're looking for now i know this isn't perfect and i'm sure a lot of people will criticize this method but the drop in Stack Overflow's traffic is evident that this is something that's happening.

1:39So whether you like it or not, or whether you think it's a good idea or not, this is something that's definitely impacting Stack Overflow. So in addition to that, there was also then the news that Stack Overflow announced they're going to be charging for their data, which of course makes sense in my opinion, right? They're seeing all of these LLMs scraping the broad internet, and everyone wants their LLM to be able to code, and essentially the data set to do that is on Stack Overflow. So they announced they'd be charging for their data. Stack Overflow has just announced a new tool, which is going to be called Overflow AI, and it is essentially to empower developers and enhance community interactions.

2:13So essentially, they are going to be setting up an AI model, Overflow AI, which is a suite of generative. It has a suite of generative AI capabilities designed to help developers and also enterprise teams. Of course, Stack Overflow is known for its kind of community driven approach. I believe that's one reason why it was so successful from the get-go. And so they did this really to kind of answer a lot of complex tech questions. So SecOverflow has proven really invaluable to a lot of developers over, you know, a decade, I think, this thing has been going. So now with this new offering, the new Overflow AI offering, I think the platform really is trying to focus on addressing the recent findings from their annual developer survey, which revealed that although a significant majority of developers want to use AI tools, only 40 % of them actually trust AI tools.

3:09And, you know, this is kind of what I alluded to at the beginning of this podcast, right? Like, they've seen a big dip in traffic. A lot of people are obviously using this. But, you know, only 40 % actually trust this. A lot of people, you know, say like, hey, ChatGPT is gaslighting me. I've heard that from a lot of developers where essentially it would just make up, you know, crazy stuff or tell them something they're trying to do was impossible when in fact it was possible. So it definitely isn't perfect. And I'm hoping and assuming that, you know, Overflow AI is going to really focus on doing better in that regard.

3:46So Overflow AI isn't a single entity, but it's a collective of initiatives comprising updated AI search on both public and enterprise platforms. So Stack Overflow for Teams is also going to get a boost with Overflow AI coming on board to kind of streamline enterprise knowledge discovery and usage. And also Stack Overflow is going to be available as a Visual Studio Code extension for enterprise users and a stack integration is also planned. So a lot of really cool features. And I think, you know, they really have to think about this from a very holistic perspective because obviously a lot of their data has already been ingested into OpenAI.

4:23And so now at this point, it's about really making sure that they are able to compete with that and really do better than what competitors that have taken all their data are currently doing. So in an interview that recently happened with VentureBeat, Stack Overflow's CEO said, quote, one of the first things that we want to focus on is search because finding information, getting the right answer at the right time and really trusting the answers is really important. I think that Stack Overflow AI is essentially going to give users the ability to ask conversational questions. It's going to generate answers from the vast reservoir of around 58 million questions that are currently on their site.

5:02And then answers from the public Stack Overflow platform, all properly cited to the specific source, which I think people are going to really appreciate, right? Instead of, you know, chat, GPT gaslighting you and saying X, Y, and Z isn't possible. this is going to tell you you know this is going to help you and then it's going to cite you to the exact source of where it got its data to be able to make its response which i think is going to be really useful because if it says something's not possible or there's some sort of issue you can go verify over at the actual source so the ceo clarified that overflow ai is not a replacement for stack overflows community but an enhancement designed to work in harmony with it i think this is a really big thing for them right they they don't want to build a product that cannibalizes their main business.

5:46So I think the new AI model utilizes natural language processing to generate highly, I mean, they say highly accurate results trained on the immense corpus of Stack Overflow's public knowledge base, right? I mean, it's just their website. It obviously has a ton of data on there. It's got 58 million questions and answers. And so I think, you know, know, that's a ton of data to be able to train an AI, especially when it's on something on a very specific niche topic. Well, I mean, relatively niche. Interestingly, overflow AI, I think, might also act as kind of a, you know, what they are saying is a gentler, more forgiving interface for less experienced users.

6:30The CEO said, quote, I asked a very, very poorly worded question and got completely slapped on the wrist um he's talking about when he first started using uh stack overflow and you know that's something it's i feel like there's just certain communities the tech community is definitely like that developers i feel like are definitely like that you'll find that on twitter and other communities as well where people are sometimes a little harsh in your response if you don't sound like you worded something perfectly overflow ai will allow users of all experience levels to bypass the potential pitfalls and occasional harshness of community feedback.

7:09So even though Overflow AI is going to make, you know, finding information more efficient, community directed responses are going to still remain a very important part of Stack Overflow's platform. Obviously, they want to continue to grow that data set, right? They don't want people to just stop and use this instead. So to facilitate discussions on AI related topics, a new generation AI Stack Exchange, which is a dedicated forum on Stack Overflow, is also part of the Overflow AI launch. In addition to these features, a relatively highly anticipated Stack Overflow extension for Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is set to offer developers a more streamlined workflow.

7:46I know a lot of people are going to be really, really excited about that. Definitely something a lot of people have been asking for. Overflow AI will enable Visual Code Studio users to essentially directly query and generate code with the potential to draw from both the public forums and an enterprise's own knowledge base, which is obviously going to be a big move for a lot of companies that want to make sure that their own knowledge base is being used. And I think it's important to note that Overflow AI is not really meant to replace existing AI integrations like, you know, Microsoft has their GitHub Copilot, but it's actually to provide additional resources information to developers overflow ai and similar offerings are all kind of part of stack overflow's ongoing mission so as their ceo put it our goal is to make us the destination for all things technology knowledge so i think overflow ai is going to be launching its alpha release in august and interested developers and enterprises can kind of sign up via stack overflow.co slash labs i think this is going to be a really big move i think Stack Overflow is definitely moving in the right direction.

8:53They may have been a little bit blindsided by, you know, ChatGPT and what was happening there, but I think this is a really important step and a big step for them on kind of taking back their data and being able to offer actual products there. So overall, I'm really excited to see where they go with this. I think the more AI models that can help developers, the better. This is definitely an area that we want to help excel the work that our incredible developers are doing on so many amazing projects around the world.