Generative AI Degrades Online Communities

Imagine you are at a crossroads in a complex project and you need quick answers on how to grapple with a problem. It is quite likely that you might turn to an online knowledge community for answers, one hosted by your company, or perhaps Stack Overflow, Quora, or Reddit. These communities have come to play a central role in knowledge exchange, in many corners of the economy and society, but they depend on voluntary participation from users just like you and me. Our recent research indicates an intriguing shift is now taking place: generative AI technologies, such as OpenAI's large language model (LLM) ChatGPT, are disrupting the status quo. Increasingly, users are gravitating toward these new AI tools to obtain answers, bypassing traditional knowledge communities.