AI systems learned to code by devouring Stack Overflow’s archive of human-solved problems. Now that developers ask ChatGPT instead of posting publicly, solutions exist only in private chat histories. They’re not indexed, not peer-reviewed, not available to the next person with the same bug. We’re trading a searchable knowledge commons for ephemeral conversations with a language model.
Meanwhile, Stack Overflow the company is doing fine — revenue hit $115 million last year, up 17 percent. They’re licensing that archive to the same AI companies killing their forum.
