From Mundane to Meaningful: AI's Influence on Work Dynamics -- evidence from ChatGPT and Stack Overflow
This study addresses the impact of generative AI on work dynamics for coders and knowledge-sharing communities, showing incremental evidence of productivity shifts.
The paper investigates how the release of ChatGPT impacted coding problem-solving by analyzing its effect on Stack Overflow usage, finding a significant drop in question volume, improved documentation, and increased complexity in remaining questions.
This paper illustrates how generative AI could give opportunities for big productivity gains but also opens up questions about the impact of these new powerful technologies on the way we work and share knowledge. More specifically, we explore how ChatGPT changed a fundamental aspect of coding: problem-solving. To do so, we exploit the effect of the sudden release of ChatGPT on the 30th of November 2022 on the usage of the largest online community for coders: Stack Overflow. Using quasi-experimental methods (Difference-in-Difference), we find a significant drop in the number of questions. In addition, the questions are better documented after the release of ChatGPT. Finally, we find evidence that the remaining questions are more complex. These findings suggest not only productivity gains but also a fundamental change in the way we work where routine inquiries are solved by AI allowing humans to focus on more complex tasks.