Over three quarters of developers use or plan to use AI tools, perceiving the main benefit as increasing productivity, but at the same time fewer than half trust the accuracy of AI tools and almost half of professional developers believe AI tools struggle to handle complex tasks.

These findings come from the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey which for the second year in succession included a section dedicated to the growing landscape of artificial intelligence. This section was expanded in 2024 with questions aimed at gleaning developer’s insights on the top ethical questions in AI, challenges utilizing AI at work, and the impact AI might have on the developer job market. 

This year's survey took place in May 2024 with responses from more than 65,000 developers across 185 countries, with the United States (18.9%), Germany (8.4%), India (7.2%), the United Kingdom (5.5%) and Ukraine,  being the top five. This annual survey is very much a community event with 93% of respondents claiming to visit Stack Overflow multiple times per month, if not multiple times per day. Respondents were assigned to one of three groups: Professional Developers, the majority of respondents; Learning to Code, the smallest group; and Other Coders slightly more numerous than learners. 

The incorporation of AI into the developer workflow is now very prevalent with this response to the question:
"Do you currently use AI tools in your development process?"

The finding from last year's survey was that 70% of all respondents were either using or planning to use AI tools in their development process so this year sees an increase to 76%, and a much bigger increase in those actually doing so - 62% versus. 44%. The top three AI tools used by developers in 2024 were ChatGPT (82%), GitHub Copilot (41%), and Google Gemini (24%).

Respondents were asked:

Which parts of your development workflow are you currently using AI tools for and which are you interested in using AI tools for over the next year? Please select all that apply.

The answers from devs currently using AI tools differed from those planning to do so, so while Writing Code is something 82% developers actually do with AI tools, only 9% of those who plan to use them envisage doing. Testing Code comes as the top task for those who don't yet use AI tools (46%) whereas only 27% of current users actually do this. Documenting code is near 40% for both current and would-be users:

The answers given about the most important benefits of using AI varied between the three groups of developers. The top benefit of AI tools for all developers is increased productivity (81%) and among Professional Developers it was 83%. 

For those Learning to code, productivity was selected by only 73% list while speeding up learning was at 71%.

Whereas last year 77% of respondents were favorably disposed towards using AI tools for development this year the proportion had declined to 72%. Countries with the highest AI favorability ratings are India and Spain (both 75%), Brazil and Italy (both 73%), and France (71%), while lower AI favorability scores came from devs in Germany (60%), Ukraine (61%), and the United Kingdom (62%).

Even though developers they have a positive attitude to AI tools, they are at the same time concerned about the trustworthiness of AI output and the ethical issues they raise. Among Professional Developers over 30% distrust the accuracy of AI output:

while 80% are worried about AI's potential  to circulate misinformation:

Other ethical concerns are missing or incorrect attribution for sources of data (65%) and bias that does not represent a diversity of viewpoints (50%).

On the other hand 70% of professional developers do not perceive AI as a threat to their jobs and one reason for this is that 45% of them consider that AI tools are bad at handling complex tasks.

More Information

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024 

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