alt Hacker NewsI think the only reason stackoverflow still has any activity is because the community choose to ban AI content [1] and so did most of its other networks [2].
Perhaps it will even see a (small) resurgence when AI providers start charging for the actual costs.
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I keep hearing that AI providers will eventually stop "subsidising inference", but I do not understand how this would make any sense economically. It is already profitable to host AI model inference for prices cheaper than the big labs are charging, as evident by the plethora of providers available to choose from on OpenRouter, for example. The only way prices could rise without competition is if you sidestepped supply and demand.
The AI companies aren't so deep in the red when you only look at inference though - they are investing loads in new models in an AI arms race.
So I don't imagine AI is going to go away, especially given that now there are more open source models like Qwen that you can run locally. So even if those American behemoths go bankrupt it will persist.
Considering StackOverflow is now providing a ground truth for AI training, I believe the ban is more about not poisoning the well rather than keeping the StackOverflow or StackExchange human-friendly.
That ship has sailed long time ago with zealot admins and verbal harassment.