Navigating the Changing Landscape of Online Knowledge Consumption and Production in the Age of Generative AI: Evidence from Stack Overflow
Abstract
Online knowledge communities rely on a division of epistemic labor between users who seek information and those who produce it. Generative AI may blur these roles, but how it reallocates knowledge-seeking and knowledge-producing activities and reshapes the nature and returns of participation remains unclear. We examine changes in question-asking and answering among Stack Overflow user groups, focusing on consumers and producers, following the release of ChatGPT. Consumers shifted from asking questions to producing answers, but their answers were less likely to be accepted relative to the pre-ChatGPT period, suggesting that increased production did not yield equal standing in the community. By contrast, producers did not change the number of questions they asked, but increasingly asked about novel and emerging topics. Although they produced fewer answers, their answers received greater recognition. These findings show that access to generative AI does not necessarily translate into equal opportunities for successful participation.
