84% of software developers are now using AI, but nearly half ‘don’t trust’ the technology over accuracy concerns
https://www.itpro.com/software/development/developers-arent-quite-ready-to-place-their-trust-in-ai-nearly-half-say-they-dont-trust-the-accuracy-of-outputs-and-end-up-wasting-time-debugging-code
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From the article: Software developers are using AI at record levels, new research shows, but they’re hesitant to place too much faith in the technology.
Findings from Stack Overflow’s annual Developer Survey show the use of technology in the software industry has surged over the last 12 months, spurred on by the emergence of AI coding tools and, most recently, agentic AI solutions.
The survey found 84% of developers currently use – or plan to use – AI tools in their daily workflows. This marks a third consecutive yearly increase and a jump from 76% in last year’s edition.
OpenAI’s GPT model range was cited as the most frequently used by developers alongside Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet range and Google’s Gemini Flash models.
Yet despite the increasing uptake of AI tools in the profession, a growing number of developers aren’t willing to put their trust in the technology. Nearly half (46%) said they “don’t trust the accuracy” of the output from AI, which marks a significant increase compared to 31% in the 2024 survey.
Notably, even if AI improves to the extent that it can carry out tasks on behalf of developers, many said they would still prefer to ask a colleague for assistance.
Three-quarters (75.3%) said they simply don’t trust AI answers and would refer to a co-worker while 61.7% revealed they frequently have ethical or security-related concerns about AI-generated code.
If you are using it, especially in work where you are putting your name and reputation behind, you are trusting it, whether you wanna believe it or not.
As a software developer, I’d say I agree. AI is extremely useful as a rubber duck – I personally use it to consider possible alternate approaches to a problem (which usually leads to my original idea being the best option anyway).
But I’d never trust it being right. I once asked for optimisation of a small hot path piece in my code base. It did provide, it ran MUCH faster. But I’m glad I decided to write tests for it – it ran faster because it didn’t even work.
So yeah. Vibe coding etc is for fools, but it’s a fine rubber duck.
It’s like having a drunk intern helping you. Some things are poetry, but most is just a mess you have to clean up
It’s interesting that everytime I actually use it is try to compensate for lack of or confusing documentation. Last time for editing excel file via Microsoft Graph. Endpoints documented returned bad requests etc and I was frustrated.
Copilot was happy to help. None of the solutions it suggested worked and everytime I said the endpoints returns bad request it responded “You’re right!” and with anothet solution that did not work. Got it working in the end with trial and error.
AI coding does not work the way they are selling before AI knows how to write tests and run those against code it writes.
But that’s basically the usecase.
AI is a better search engine that doubles as a second opinion generator that you can throw ideas to and it can give you a take on it.
The thing is, you HAVE to be smarter and more knowledgeable than the AI, else it doesn’t work properly.
I have accuracy concerns about what I find on Google too. These things are just tools, you still have to use your brain. If you didn’t you would be out of a job.
I’m just starting out my programming journey. I have no intention of using any AI to write code.
I’ve tried to use it
And waste more time fixing it
It may be trained on PHD level, but it acts like a drunk, meth head employee in practice
> The survey found 84% of developers currently use – or plan to use – AI tools in their daily workflows.
Or plan to use it. Also, this makes no mention of whether that’s primarily auto complete, or full on vibe coding, or your company uses AI for password resets now and that counts.
Let’s be very honest here. I don’t trust my software developers either. That’s why I have a QA department.