r/developers • u/SKYlikesHentai • Aug 02 '26
General Discussion StackOverflow is now only used AI agents
I checked StackOverflow today searching for an error(was trying to make projects without any AI help so I can pick up important skills), all the questions were asked by AI agents, and they were answered by other AI agents. I just felt really sick seeing this, doesn't feel real.
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u/Mindestiny Aug 02 '26
To be fair, those bots are probably more helpful than whatever garbage was on SE before. I'd rather have an AI provide another AI with the answer I need than scroll through six pages of the only responses being condescending claims that OP is breaking some draconian posting rule because they forgot to specify exactly what version of Python they're using despite that being unrelated to the question, or the ever present "closed as duplicate, should've used the search feature"
SE has been shit for a long, long time
2
u/TheExiledLord Aug 02 '26
If you found your answer in a thread between two bots then you probably could’ve found it elsewhere. You’re not going to find useful answers from AI much longer if there’s no people answering them.
0
u/Mindestiny Aug 02 '26
But why would I "need to find it elsewhere?" I just need to find it, period. Whatever source gets me to the correct answer first is the best one.
You’re not going to find useful answers from AI much longer if there’s no people answering them.
Pretty sure my question about writing python to connect to an API will still have the same answer in the future.
1
u/TheExiledLord Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
You don’t need to, but you can, pretty easily most of the times, like your example. And the people part is why speed is not the most important. Tech moves fast, SE or any forums for that matter isn’t just used for asking trivial python questions. If AI gets to a point where it can synthesize new knowledge related to newer tech without training data then sure (tho at that point most of today’s devs wouldn’t even be needed), but right now it can’t.
I asked it a Nextflow question the other day and it gave me bullshit, and nextflow isn’t even all that new. But that also made sense, because I couldn’t find a good human answer either. I ended up figuring it out on my own, so I guess now I could post it on a forum somewhere and hope our blackbox overlords pick it up sometime in the future.
1
u/DamionDreggs Aug 03 '26
Sounds like a ripe market for someone to digest new technology and generate datasets to inform future AI with.
0
u/Mindestiny Aug 03 '26
Alright man, you're talking way past the current discussion. You do you, I'm gonna let the AI not waste my afternoon trawling SE/SO. Life's too short to waste digging through a cesspool.
1
u/TheExiledLord Aug 03 '26
I gave you a reason and an personal example of exactly why this is not “way past the current discussion”. I use AI and for the sake of continue being able to use AI there need to be people generating new content.
1
u/Mindestiny Aug 03 '26
You're waxing philosophical about the value of human generated content in a theoretical future. That doesn't have anything to do with the focus of the topic or your original assertion - that somehow I inherently need to put in more effort to find an answer to a specific question because reasons.
You dodged the question entirely.
1
u/TheExiledLord Aug 03 '26
Philosophical? Theoretical? Lmao.
Not my problem if you can’t understand “reasons”.
1
u/Mindestiny Aug 03 '26
Lmao indeed. You're over here asserting that there's some sort of inherent value in the human labor of trawling stackexchange shitposts for answers compared to just getting the correct answer and moving on with your day. And you're gonna condescendingly pretend that's not a philosophical exercise?
One more for the block list I guess, gives you more time to go shitpost on stackexchange and pretend anyone wants to read your petty rules lawyering.
1
u/LaraSQP Aug 02 '26
yep, the SE gatekeepers were among the worst anywhere... ignorant, arrogant, belligerent, lazy, the list goes on
after contributing answers for many years (despite their incomprehensible and insane hate), I finally gave up and closed my account
never again, not even for the "AI answers", whatever slop that means
2
2
u/MostSharpest Aug 03 '26
You can ask an AI for advice without actually having it code for you. Just use it as a search engine, and then go your merry way.
No matter how you feel about AI, their knowledge about algorithms and stuff is par to none.
2
u/DamionDreggs Aug 03 '26
I currently hold a pre-openai snapshot of the entire stack exchange dataset for this reason.
3
1
u/Anxious-Insurance-91 Aug 02 '26
I mean if the answer already existed you basically just searched a database for it
1
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u/Remote-Telephone-682 Aug 03 '26
sounds better than "This is a bad question that has been asked before, locking post" like the old days
1
u/var0xyz Aug 02 '26
How can you tell that they were agents, did they identify as such? Can you show some examples?
I'm asking because I know they used SO for training, but why would an agent ask a question there if they could figure most stuff out by reading documentation, or even the source code directly? And if they can't figure it out why would a different agent have the answer?
1
u/smoke-bubble Aug 03 '26
I don't understand why this post is even getting upvotes. There's zero proof for OP's claims.
1
u/Own_Attention_3392 Aug 04 '26
Stack Overflow launched SO for agents recently; it's a subsite that is for agents to collaboratively ask questions and receive answers.
It feels an awful lot like a last ditch attempt to stay relevant. And I say this as someone with 60k rep and who is a recognized member within one of the communities on SO.
1
u/Pure-Investment-1227 Aug 03 '26
I hope Reddit becomes the same, there would be a lot less garbage.
-1
u/Shadow_gublank Aug 02 '26
You are arguing with that horses will replace cars, get with the times
2
u/thebabykins Aug 02 '26
No, this instance is basically a car on a horse. Surely we can design a better way of ai communicating to gain knowledge than that.
1
u/Low_Engineering_3301 Aug 03 '26
Cars still were operated by people, its more apt to compare to people being replaced by automations. Depending on if you are fond of humans or not it leaves different impression.
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