The widespread use of generative AI may be driving experienced contributors away from online knowledge-sharing communities, with new research suggesting the people leaving are often those with the deepest expertise.
Research from the University of Auckland examined activity on Stack Overflow, one of the world’s largest online communities for software developers, and found respected contributors began leaving the platform at faster rates from 2022, when generative AI tools such as ChatGPT became widely available.
Business School researcher Dr Kenny Ching analysed the activity of 24,304 contributors over a 17-month period to examine how the arrival of generative AI affected participation.
He found that higher-reputation users, who had spent years building specialist knowledge and earning recognition from the developer community, increasingly withdrew after AI-generated responses became commonplace.
“As AI-generated content becomes more common, people might feel their expertise and effort no longer stand out or are valued. Some stop contributing altogether.”
Stack Overflow, launched in 2008, has around 23 million registered users and allows programmers to ask and answer technical questions. Community members vote responses up or down, with contributors earning reputation points for accurate, useful and well-explained answers.
Researchers noted that users with high reputation scores have typically demonstrated expertise over many years through consistent, high-quality contributions.
Ching said the trend was particularly concerning because those leaving were often among the platform’s most knowledgeable members.
“They aren’t leaving because they can’t compete with the technology; they’re leaving because their hard-earned expertise is no longer distinct from a chatbot’s answer.”
The study found that while newer or less-established contributors had historically been more likely to leave the platform, departures among highly regarded contributors accelerated after 2022, steadily narrowing the gap between the two groups.
Ching argues that AI is making expert and non-expert responses appear increasingly alike, reducing the visibility of genuine expertise. He describes the effect as “signal compression”.
“On Stack Overflow, the withdrawal of genuine contributors is real, measurable, and accelerating, and the most affected are often those whose authentic expertise is most valuable and hardest to replace.
“If everybody can create a good quality response or output using AI, some people may think, ‘Why should I make an effort to share my expertise and participate?’”
While the research focused on Stack Overflow, Ching believes the pattern may extend beyond software development into education, workplaces and research.
“This isn’t just about coding platforms. I argue this exact same dynamic is discouraging genuine effort in classrooms, corporate workplaces, and scientific communities. The long-term risk is that by crushing the incentive to show genuine effort, AI might actually truncate the formation of future human expertise.”
The study argues that people with “high ability”, who have invested the most time developing specialist knowledge, face the greatest loss in the perceived value of that expertise as AI-generated content becomes increasingly common, leading some to disengage from the communities they helped build.
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