The AI effect

Since ChatGPT came out in November 2022, people have said AI killed Stack Overflow, Chegg, translators, call centres and a lot more. I checked fifty-six of those claims against company filings and public data. Six things really are gone, twenty-two shrank, and thirteen grew.

6gone
22shrunk
10pivoted
13grew
5started before

Gone6

Shrunk22

Pivoted10

Grew13

Started before ChatGPT5

Every entry on this page. Tap a name to jump to its numbers and its source.

On 1 May 2023, Chegg's boss Dan Rosensweig told investors that since March, a lot of students had been doing their homework with ChatGPT. Chegg sold homework answers. The next day it lost almost half its value.

Since then AI has been blamed for killing quite a lot: Stack Overflow, Grammarly, call centres, translators, Google, radiologists, essay writers in Nairobi. Most of it gets said at dinner and never checked, so I spent a week checking.

Start with Stack Overflow, because everyone does. In November 2022, the month ChatGPT came out, people asked it 109,120 questions. In September 2026 they asked 975.

Stack Overflow, new questions per month, 2014 to 2026 · September 2026: 975

56k 112k 168k 224k 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022 · that month: 109k dotted: the 2014 to 2022 trend, 88k by now Sep 2026: 975 questions
56k 112k 168k 224k 2016 2020 2024 ChatGPT

Dotted line: where the trend before ChatGPT was heading. Source: Stack Exchange API, questions still live on the site; deleted questions are not counted, so the early years are a little low.

This chart has been on the front page of Hacker News twice this year, and both times the comments had the same argument. It was already falling about 5% a year from 2014, the moderators were famously strict, and one website isn't the economy. Everyone in that thread was a bit right.

So I made a list of everything people say AI has killed since 30 November 2022, and kept only what I could check against a company filing, a public dataset or the US government counting people.

Where I had the whole history, I drew it, with a dotted line for where things were already heading before ChatGPT. If something was already sliding downhill, I don't think AI gets the credit for it carrying on.

Fifty-six things made the list. Six are gone and twenty-two shrank. Ten found a new way to make money, usually by selling their old stuff to the AI companies. Thirteen were meant to die and grew, and five were dying before anyone had heard of ChatGPT.

How I sorted them

Gone means it closed, it stopped, or it lost more than two thirds of its main number. Shrunk means it's down, and the fall starts after late 2022. Pivoted means the old business went and the company found a new one. Grew means people said it would die and it didn't.

I only used real numbers, like users, questions, jobs, revenue and page views. I left out share prices, because almost every company here peaked in 2021 along with everyone's crypto. I left out traffic guesses from tools like Similarweb, because nobody can check them.

If a company blamed AI, I quote it. If it blamed something else, I quote that instead, and every card links to where its number came from.

Gone

Six things that closed, stopped, or lost more than two thirds of their main number.

In Nairobi, writing essays for American and British students was a proper job. At least 40,000 people did it, for $40 to $70 an essay. Teresios Bundi wrote 2,500 of them over twelve years.

In September 2026 the New York Times went back and found the trade had "vanished within two years" of ChatGPT. Richard Eshilache used to run a hundred writers and has closed. The writers still going earn about $650 a month, down from about $1,000.

“vanished within two years”

The New York Times, 5 September 2026, on Nairobi's essay-writing trade

Chegg is the cleanest example, because it kept publishing its numbers until they got embarrassing. It had 5.4 million subscribers in early 2022 and 2.6 million by mid-2025, and then it stopped publishing them.

Its staff went from 2,071 to 595. In February 2025 it sued Google. Its revenue is now running about 73% below 2022, which is past our line for gone.

To be fair to ChatGPT, Chegg's traffic started falling in May 2022, when students went back to real classrooms. That's why its dotted line already points down.

Chegg subscribers (millions) Quarterly, from 26 8-K releases 2019-Q1 2025-Q2 -52%

Coding bootcamps promised adults a programming job in twelve weeks. Eight have closed or stopped taking students. BloomTech, which used to be Lambda School, taught its last class on New Year's Eve 2025.

General Assembly stopped selling courses to the public in April 2026, and CareerFoundry went bust that February. Code Fellows, Launch Academy, Codeup and Epicodus have shut, and 2U closed its bootcamps in bankruptcy. Codesmith has paused and Launch School is still open, so they're not on the list.

Scale AI runs Remotasks, a site where people label the data that AI learns from. On 8 March 2024 it cut off every worker in Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan with a one-line message: "discontinuing operations in your current location". Scale hasn't published how many people got it.

Three products were replaced by their own company's AI. Microsoft ended Cortana in 2023, and its help page now sends you to Copilot. Google started switching off Google Assistant for Gemini on 4 September 2026. Socratic, Google's homework app, now opens Google Lens.

That's the whole list of things that are actually gone. I expected it to be longer.

Stack Overflow, the forum

Gone

New questions a month

109,120Nov 2022→975Sep 2026

-99%

It was already losing about 5% of its questions a year before ChatGPT. After November 2022 the number roughly halved every year. The company itself is fine, as you'll see further down.

Stack Exchange API, pulled by us, 154 months

Chegg

Gone

Subscribers

5.4 millionQ1 2022→2.6 million, then undisclosedQ2 2025

-52% subscribers; revenue run-rate -73%; staff -71%

Revenue was $767 million in 2022 and $377 million in 2025. Staff went from 2,071 to 595. Chegg sued Google over AI search answers in February 2025. Its traffic had started dipping in May 2022, before ChatGPT.

“since March we saw a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT”Dan Rosensweig, boss, earnings call, 1 May 2023; the shares fell 48% the next day
Chegg 10-K 2025 and 26 quarterly 8-K releases

Kenya's essay-writing trade

Gone

People writing other students' essays in Nairobi

at least 40,000early 2020s→"vanished within two years"Sep 2026

Teresios Bundi wrote 2,500 essays over twelve years. Richard Eshilache ran a hundred writers and has shut down. Monthly pay for those still working fell from about $1,000 to about $650.

“vanished within two years”The New York Times, 5 September 2026, on the trade after ChatGPT
New York Times via the Boston Globe, 5 Sep 2026

Coding bootcamps

Gone

Schools closed or out of the consumer business

BloomTech, General Assembly (consumer), CareerFoundry, Code Fellows, 2U, Launch Academy, Codeup, Epicodus2023 to 2026

8 closures

BloomTech, once Lambda School, taught its last class on 31 December 2025. General Assembly stopped selling to the public in April 2026. Codesmith has only paused and Launch School is still open, so they're not counted.

Course Report; each closure checked separately

Cortana, Google Assistant, Socratic

Gone

Products retired by their own makers' AI

Cortana ended 2023; Assistant phase-out from 4 Sep 2026; Socratic folded into Lens2023 to 2026

3 products

Microsoft's Cortana help page now points you to Copilot. Google pushed the Assistant switch-off from late 2025 into 2026. Socratic, Google's homework app, now sends you to Lens.

“there are new and exciting ways you can get help ... Microsoft Copilot”Microsoft, end of support notice for Cortana
Microsoft support; Google support

Remotasks in Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan

Gone

Workers cut off

every worker in three countries, without notice8 Mar 2024

New sign-ups also stopped in Thailand, Vietnam and Poland. Scale blamed security and "operational errors", and hasn't published how many people were cut off.

“discontinuing operations in your current location effective March 8, 2024”the notice workers received
Rest of World, 28 March 2024

Shrunk

Twenty-two things that are down since late 2022, but still here.

English Wikipedia had 7.47 billion human page views in November 2022, and 6.27 billion in September 2026. That's about 16% fewer.

The odd part is when. ChatGPT's first year made no difference at all. The fall starts in 2024, when Google began putting its own AI answer above the results. The people who write Wikipedia are still there, editing about as much as ever.

English Wikipedia, pages read by people per month · September 2026: 6.3bn

2.5bn 5bn 7.5bn 10bn 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022 · that month: 7.5bn dotted: the 2016 to 2022 trend, 7.1bn by now Sep 2026: 6.3bn
2.5bn 5bn 7.5bn 10bn 2016 2020 2024 ChatGPT

Dotted line: where the trend before ChatGPT was heading. Source: Wikimedia pageviews API, agent = user. Bot traffic was reclassified in 2025, so 2023 and 2024 may still carry some scrapers.

So which pages lost their readers? I picked 120 well-known English articles in eight groups and compared 2022 with 2026.

Programming pages like Python and SQL lost 73% of their readers. Grammar lost 62%, health pages like migraine 58%, and science and maths about half. Pages about famous people lost 28%. People still look up Taylor Swift, and photosynthesis is having a quieter time.

Programming (Python, SQL, recursion, regex…)-68%
Maths (Pythagoras, derivative, logarithm…)-59%
Health (migraine, insomnia, anaemia…)-57%
Grammar (metaphor, noun, irony…)-56%
Science (photosynthesis, DNA, gravity…)-51%
Evergreen entertainment (Harry Potter, Friends, Star Wars…)-47%
Evergreen celebrities (Taylor Swift, Messi, Shah Rukh Khan…)-38%
History (WWII, French Revolution, Mughals…)-36%

Median change per article, Jan–Nov 2022 average against the 2026 average, 15 long-standing English Wikipedia articles per basket. Our measurement from the Wikimedia API; the full list is in the sources.

Other languages lost more readers than English did. Since 2022 German Wikipedia is down 16%, French 20%, Spanish 38%, Arabic 49% and Hindi 73%, while English is down 8%. Wiktionary, the dictionary, is up 26%, so somebody is still looking words up.

Hindi-73%
Arabic-49%
Spanish-38%
Russian-34%
Portuguese-29%
Italian-21%
French-20%
German-16%
Japanese-13%
Chinese-12%
English-8%
Korean-7%
Wiktionary (the dictionary)+26%

Human pageviews per month, Jan–Nov 2022 average against 2026, Wikimedia API. Hindi carries a bot caveat: Wikimedia found evasive scraper traffic from South Asia and Brazil in 2025.

Korea's version of Quora is called Naver Knowledge iN. People asked it 24.6 million questions in 2022 and 15.5 million in 2024, and by April 2025 it was under a million a month. In April 2026 the head of Korea's voice actors' association told the Korea Times that a lot of his members had seen their income halve in a year or two.

Zhihu, China's Quora, went from 103 million monthly users in 2021 to 81 million in 2024, then stopped publishing the number. NerdWallet, the credit card comparison site, went from 24 million monthly users to 19 million in a year. It told investors its "traffic headwinds worsened", and from the next quarter it stopped reporting users too.

Zhihu monthly active users (millions) Quarterly; undisclosed after 2024 2021-Q1 2024-Q4 -19% NerdWallet monthly users (millions) Quarterly; not reported after 2024 2021-Q1 2024-Q4 -21% Fiverr active buyers (millions) Quarterly earnings releases 2020-Q1 2026-Q2 -37% RWS adjusted profit before tax (£ millions) FY25 results, 11 Dec 2025 FY24 FY25 -43% Appen revenue (US$ millions) ASX results; Google left Jan 2024 2021 2025 -48%

Fiverr is where you pay a stranger to do a small job. It had 4.3 million active buyers at the end of 2022 and 2.7 million by June 2026. Its annual report says AI "has reduced the demand for simple and low-skilled services". The buyers who stayed spend more each.

Three separate studies of freelance sites say the same thing. Writing work went first, then translation. One looked at five million Upwork job posts and found writing jobs down by a third.

RWS is the biggest translation company on any stock market. Its profit fell 43% in a year, and its shares fell 42% in one day. Its results said "some clients shifted towards initial LLM-first translation approaches", meaning clients started putting their text through AI first.

“some clients shifted towards initial LLM-first translation approaches”

RWS, the world's largest listed translation company, results statement, 11 December 2025

Every May the US government counts how many people do each job. Customer service reps went from 2.88 million in 2022 to 2.60 million in 2025. Data entry fell 19%, web developers 21% and journalists 13%.

In September 2025 Salesforce's boss Marc Benioff said his support team had gone from 9,000 people to about 5,000, "because I need less heads".

Customer service representatives 2,879,840 → 2,595,750 people 2019 2025 -10% Data entry keyers 157,380 → 127,080 people 2019 2025 -19% Web developers 88,620 → 70,190 people 2022 2025 -21% News analysts, reporters and journalists 44,530 → 39,250 people 2019 2025 -12% Graphic designers 211,890 → 197,830 people 2019 2025 -7%

US employment by job, from the government's yearly count (BLS OEWS), May 2019 to May 2025. The survey blends three years, so single-year moves are rough.

Some of the biggest falls are not deaths. Appen ran a crowd of a million people labelling data for Google. Google ended the deal on a Saturday in January 2024, and Appen says it had "no prior knowledge". Its revenue is down 48% since 2021, and it's still going.

US proofreaders fell from 7,730 to 4,580. Special effects artists and animators fell from 35,990 to 19,970, the biggest drop of any desk job, though the 2023 Hollywood strikes are in that number too.

Some of it is AI eating AI. Jasper sold AI-written marketing copy and was valued at $1.5 billion six weeks before ChatGPT came out for free. Within a year it had marked itself down, and its boss had left.

Special effects artists and animators 35,990 → 19,970 people 2019 2025 -45% Proofreaders and copy markers 5,120 → 4,580 people 2019 2025 -11%

US employment by job, from the government's yearly count (BLS OEWS).

New graduates are getting fewer chances. At the 15 biggest tech companies they were 7% of hires in 2025, under half their share in 2019.

Stanford looked at payroll records for 4.6 million US workers. In the jobs AI can do most of, 22 to 25-year-olds are 19% behind where they'd be if they'd kept up with everyone else. Older people in the same jobs aren't behind at all, and the difference is in hiring: companies are taking on fewer young people.

Jobs held by 22 to 25-year-olds, Nov 2022 = 100 (Stanford and ADP payroll data)

81 92 103 114 70 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 ChatGPT 22–25, most AI-exposed jobs: 87.2 22–25, least exposed: 108.1
92 114 70 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 ChatGPT most exposed: 87.2 least exposed: 108.1

Here's every US job with at least 20,000 people, sorted by how much it shrank between 2022 and 2025. Telemarketers, engine assemblers and plasterers sit near the top, next to programmers. Plasterers did not lose their jobs to a chatbot, so this is a list of things that shrank, and only some of them are AI's doing.

Special Effects Artists and Animators-45%
Telemarketers-39%
Broadcast Technicians-36%
Order Clerks-34%
Engine and Other Machine Assemblers-32%
Loan Interviewers and Clerks-32%
Computer Programmers-31%
Postsecondary Teachers, All Other-30%
Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service-28%
Coin, Vending, and Amusement Machine Servicers and Repairers-26%
Fiberglass Laminators and Fabricators-26%
Plasterers and Stucco Masons-26%
Upholsterers-25%
Metal Workers and Plastic Workers, All Other-24%

The 14 biggest falls among 553 US occupations with at least 20,000 people in 2022, BLS OEWS May 2022 to May 2025. Our ranking of the official spreadsheets. Engine assemblers and plasterers are in there too: not everything that fell, fell to AI.

Job ads say the same in six countries. Since ChatGPT came out, ads for software developers on Indeed are down 45% in the US, 47% in Canada, 48% in Australia, 55% in the UK, 61% in France and 68% in Germany. In the US, though, almost 40% of that drop happened before ChatGPT, when interest rates went up.

Germany-68%
France-61%
United Kingdom-55%
Australia-48%
Canada-47%
United States-45%

Software development postings, Indeed Hiring Lab, 30 Nov 2022 to 9 Oct 2026.

Every type of job ad is down since 2022, because the hiring boom ended, so the order is the interesting bit. Data, software, media, marketing and admin are at the bottom. Doctors, therapists, dentists and engineers are at the top.

Data & Analytics-53%
Childcare-49%
Medical Information-48%
IT Infrastructure, Operations & Support-47%
Accounting-45%
Software Development-45%
Media & Communications-45%
Scientific Research & Development-44%
IT Systems & Solutions-42%
Administrative Assistance-42%
Architecture-39%
Marketing-38%
Human Resources-36%
Hospitality & Tourism-36%
Driving-36%
Cleaning & Sanitation-36%
Community & Social Service-35%
Nursing-34%
Education & Instruction-34%
Social Science-32%
Medical Technician-32%
Retail-32%
Loading & Stocking-31%
Production & Manufacturing-30%
Arts & Entertainment-30%
Dental-30%
Customer Service-30%
Food Preparation & Service-28%
Pharmacy-27%
Aviation-27%
Banking & Finance-26%
Logistic Support-26%
Installation & Maintenance-25%
Project Management-24%
Construction-24%
Management-23%
Industrial Engineering-23%
Security & Public Safety-23%
Sales-22%
Legal-21%
Civil Engineering-19%
Personal Care & Home Health-17%
Insurance-17%
Electrical Engineering-13%
Mechanical Engineering-6%
Therapy+2%
Physicians & Surgeons+8%

Indeed Hiring Lab US job postings index, 30 Nov 2022 to 9 Oct 2026, all 47 sectors. Every sector fell because the 2022 hiring boom unwound; the order is the signal.

Companies have started blaming AI out loud. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counts US job cuts by the reason the company gives. AI was the reason for 4,247 cuts in 2023 and 54,836 in 2025. In the first nine months of 2026 it was 120,136, the most common reason any company gave this year.

In June 2025 Amazon's boss Andy Jassy told staff AI would "reduce our total corporate workforce", and 14,000 office jobs went that October. Microsoft cut about 15,000 people in 2025 and didn't blame AI, so Microsoft isn't on this page.

US job cuts the employer blamed on AI, per month · September 2026: 4.0k

10k 21k 31k 42k 2024 2025 2026 Sep 2026: 4.0k
10k 21k 31k 42k 2024 2025 2026

Challenger, Gray & Christmas monthly reports, May 2023 to September 2026. Jan–May 2025 reports had no AI row.

US essay mills

Shrunk

Revenue and web traffic

revenue -28% in April 2023; traffic about -50% Jan 2023 to Jan 20242024

-50%

The founder of Killer Papers wrote that revenue fell 28% in April 2023 alone. A tracker of these sites found their traffic halved in a year, then fell another 17%.

“we saw revenue drop a staggering 28%”the founder of Killer Papers, on April 2023
The Cheat Sheet; traffic tracker at thisisntfine.substack.com

Special effects artists and animators (US)

Shrunk

People employed

35,9902022→19,9702025

-45%

The biggest fall of any desk job with 20,000 or more people. The 2023 Hollywood strikes are in this number too.

BLS OEWS national, occupation 27-1014

Jasper, Copy.ai, Lensa (the first AI wrappers)

Shrunk

Valuation and revenue of the first AI wrappers

Jasper $1.5bnOct 2022→marked down 20%, revenue forecast cut 30%+, CEO out; Lensa revenue -58%2023

Jasper was valued at $1.5 billion in October 2022. Within a year it had marked itself down, cut its sales forecast by a third, and its boss had left. Lensa's selfie-avatar craze was over by spring 2023.

Maginative; Sacra; Business of Apps (estimates)

Appen

Shrunk

Revenue

US$447 million2021→US$231 million2025

-48%

Google gave notice on Saturday 20 January 2024, and the work ended in March. Google had been worth $82.8 million a year to Appen. The shares fell 41% that Monday.

“Appen had no prior knowledge of Google's decision”Appen, ASX announcement, 22 January 2024
Appen ASX announcements 2024 to 2026

New-graduate hiring in Big Tech

Shrunk

New graduates as a share of hires at the 15 biggest tech companies

about 14%2019→7%2025

-50%

Down a quarter on 2023 and by more than half on 2019. At startups it's under 6%. This comes from a venture capital firm's own data, so treat it as an estimate.

SignalFire State of Talent, May 2025

Wikipedia's readers

Shrunk

Pages read by people a month, English

7.47 billionNov 2022→6.27 billionSep 2026

-16%

The drop starts in 2024, when AI answers arrived in Google, not in 2023. Editors haven't left. Hindi Wikipedia is down 73%, Arabic 49%, Spanish 38% and English 8%.

“roughly 8%”the Wikimedia Foundation, 17 October 2025, on human pageviews against the year before, after reclassifying bots
Wikimedia pageviews API, pulled by us; WMF statement

Naver Knowledge iN

Shrunk

Questions posted a year, Korea's Q&A

24.6 million2022→15.5 million; 930,000 in April 20252024

-37%

Naver added its own AI answers in November 2024. According to the paper, they didn't bring people back.

Korea JoongAng Daily, 31 May 2025

Zhihu

Shrunk

Monthly active users, China's Quora

103.3 millionQ4 2021→81.4 million, then undisclosedQ4 2024

-21%

Revenue fell 24% in 2025. Paying members went from 14.1 million to 12.2 million. Zhihu says it chose to spend less on finding new users.

“accelerating our commercialization explorations related to AI”Zhihu's boss, results release
Zhihu quarterly results, HKEX and SEC 6-K

NerdWallet

Shrunk

Average monthly unique users

24 millionQ3 2023→19 million, then the metric was droppedQ4 2024

-20%

Revenue still grew 22% in 2025, thanks to insurance. Credit card revenue fell 24%. From early 2025 it stopped reporting how many people use the site.

“traffic headwinds worsened in Q4 in non-monetizing 'learn' topics”NerdWallet, results release, 19 February 2025
NerdWallet 10-Qs 2021 to 2025

Fiverr

Shrunk

Active buyers

4.3 millionQ4 2022→2.7 millionQ2 2026

-37%

Buyers who stayed spend 16% more each, and big coding jobs over $1,000 grew 34%. The cheap, quick jobs are the ones that went.

“the evolving AI landscape has reduced the demand for simple and low-skilled services on our marketplace”Fiverr, annual report (20-F) for 2025
Fiverr 20-F and 26 quarterly releases

RWS

Shrunk

Adjusted profit before tax, the largest listed translation company

£106.7 millionFY2024→£60.4 millionFY2025

-43%

Its shares fell 42% on the day of its April 2025 profit warning. About a third of its sales now come from AI work.

“some clients shifted towards initial LLM-first translation approaches”RWS, full-year results statement, 11 December 2025
RWS FY25 RNS

Customer service representatives (US)

Shrunk

People employed

2,879,8402022→2,595,7502025

-10%

Worldwide, call-centre jobs grew about 4% a year in the 2010s. Now they're shrinking at about 4% a year.

“because I need less heads”Marc Benioff, Salesforce's boss, September 2025, on cutting support staff from 9,000 to about 5,000
BLS OEWS, occupation 43-4051; Revelio Labs

Data entry keyers (US)

Shrunk

People employed

157,3802022→127,0802025

-19%

Data entry keyers, in the US government's job count.

BLS OEWS, occupation 43-9021

Web developers (US)

Shrunk

People employed

88,6202022→70,1902025

-21%

The fall starts after 2023. Web and app designers, the job next door in the same count, grew 16%.

BLS OEWS, occupation 15-1254

Journalists (US)

Shrunk

People employed

45,0202023→39,2502025

-13%

Business Insider cut a fifth of its staff in May 2025. The publisher of Allrecipes says Google used to bring 54% of its visits, and now brings 21%. French news sites lost 23% of their Google visits in a year.

“extreme traffic drops outside of our control”Barbara Peng, boss of Business Insider, 29 May 2025
BLS OEWS, occupation 27-3023; IAC earnings; ACPM

Graphic designers (US)

Shrunk

People employed

214,2602024→197,8302025

-8% in one year

A quarter of illustrators told the Society of Authors in 2024 that they'd lost work to AI. In 2026, 52% of game developers said AI is bad for their industry, up from 18% two years before.

BLS OEWS, occupation 27-1024

Freelance writing

Shrunk

Jobs and earnings on Upwork

jobs -2% a month, earnings -5%; postings -33%; demand 20 to 50% below trend2023 to 2025

-33%

Three separate studies agree. One followed 92,547 writers, one looked at five million job posts, and one found writing and translation demand 20% to 50% below where it should be.

Hui, Reshef and Zhou; Bloomberry; Teutloff et al.

Publishers' Google traffic

Shrunk

Google referrals to news sites

-33% worldwide, -38% US, in the year to Nov 20252025

-33%

Pew found that when Google shows an AI answer, people click a result 8% of the time instead of 15%. They click a link inside the AI answer just 1% of the time.

Chartbeat via the Reuters Institute; Pew Research

Software-developer job postings

Shrunk

Indeed postings index, six countries

142.5 (US)30 Nov 2022→78.1 (US)9 Oct 2026

-45% US, -68% Germany

US down 45%, Canada 47%, Australia 48%, UK 55%, France 61% and Germany 68%. In the US, almost 40% of the fall came before ChatGPT, when interest rates rose.

“declines in AI-exposed vacancies began before ChatGPT”Indeed Hiring Lab, July 2026
Indeed Hiring Lab CSVs, read 9 Oct 2026

Young workers in AI-exposed jobs

Shrunk

Jobs held by 22 to 25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed work (Nov 2022 = 100)

100Nov 2022→87.2, against 108.1 for the least exposedAug 2026

-19% relative

Based on payroll records for 4.6 million workers. Older workers in the same jobs show no gap. The gap comes from fewer young people being hired. The researchers say it's a pattern, not proof of cause.

Stanford Digital Economy Lab / ADP, Canaries dashboard

Layoffs blamed on AI (US)

Shrunk

Job cuts where the employer named AI as the reason

4,2472023→120,136, the top stated reasonJan to Sep 2026

Amazon's 14,000 office cuts came with a memo about AI. Microsoft cut about 15,000 people in 2025 and never blamed AI, so it isn't counted.

“we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI”Andy Jassy, boss of Amazon, 17 June 2025
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 41 monthly reports

Hacker News stopped asking

If you got here from Hacker News, it changed too. I counted posts with at least two points. Ask HN went from 1,321 posts in November 2022 to 736 last month, and Show HN went from 710 to 2,445.

The number of popular stories hasn't moved, so people are still here. They ask fewer questions and post more things they've made, some of them with the thing that answers questions.

Hacker News posts that got at least two points, every quarter

1.9k 3.7k 0 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 ChatGPT Ask HN: 736 Show HN: 2,445
1.9k 3.7k 0 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 ChatGPT Ask HN: 736 Show HN: 2,445

Dani Horowitz has run the coding forum DaniWeb since 2002. Last year she wrote that "DaniWeb is definitely dead". She blamed her health first, then Google, then "fewer people asking questions", then fewer staff, and then AI.

Found a new business

Ten companies whose old business went, and who now earn from something else.

Plenty of the dying sold their old stuff to the AI companies on the way out. Stack Overflow the company is fine. Its revenue roughly doubled to about $115 million, partly from licensing 17 years of answers to Google and OpenAI in 2024.

Reddit made about $140 million in 2025 letting AI companies use its posts. Its daily users more than doubled, partly because Google now puts Reddit above the sites that died. Shutterstock got $104 million from AI companies in 2023 and $203 million from data deals in 2025, and AP, Axel Springer, News Corp and the Financial Times have all signed too.

Sold the archive

Reddit, 2025 licensing~$140M
Shutterstock, data licensing 2025$203M
Shutterstock, AI companies 2023$104M
Wiley, AI licences FY26$49M
Stack Overflow, revenue now~$115M

Fell, then found another living

QuoraPoe, its chatbot aggregator
Klarna7,400 staff to ~3,000, now rehiring
Teleperformancerevenue flat, market value $26bn to $5bn
Tripadvisorbrand site down 8%, Viator up
Keywords Studiostaken private on AI fear
Unbabelan AI translator, cut 25%, sold

Neil Clarke edits Clarkesworld, a science fiction magazine that pays its writers. He used to ban a dozen or so cheats a month. In November 2022 he banned 25, in January 2023 over 100, and by mid-February about 350.

He closed submissions and wrote that chatbots had given the cheats "a new tool in their arsenal". Three weeks later he reopened with better filters and hasn't closed since, which is why the magazine is in this section and not the gone one.

Before, a typical month<20
November 202225
December 202250
January 2023100
1 to 15 February 2023350

Clarkesworld submitters banned for plagiarism or machine-written work, from Neil Clarke's post of 15 February 2023. January is 'over 100' and February 'around 350' in his words.

People keep saying ChatGPT killed Grammarly. It had 30 million daily users in 2021 and says it has 40 million now. In May 2025 it raised a billion dollars and renamed itself Superhuman, so in a way Grammarly did die.

Klarna went the other way. It cut from 7,400 staff to about 3,000 and said its AI was doing the work of 700 support agents. By 2025 its boss Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the result was "lower quality", and Klarna started hiring people again.

“lower quality”

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Klarna's boss, in 2025, on what replacing support staff with AI had produced

Clarkesworld

Pivoted

Open submissions at a magazine that pays for science fiction

under 20a typical month→closed 20 Feb 2023, reopened 12 Mar 2023 behind new filters2023

closed for three weeks

Bans for cheating went from under 20 a month to 25 in November 2022, over 100 in January and about 350 by mid-February. Clarke closed for three weeks, fixed his filters and reopened. He hasn't had to close since.

“'AI' chatbots started gaining some attention, putting a new tool in their arsenal”Neil Clarke, editor, 15 February 2023
Neil Clarke, A concerning trend

Stack Overflow, the company

Pivoted

Revenue

about half of today's2022→about $115 million2025

roughly doubled

Money now comes from business subscriptions and from licensing 17 years of answers to Google and OpenAI in 2024. Its owner Prosus still wrote down nearly $1 billion of its value.

Prosus results, via Gigazine

Shutterstock

Pivoted

Data licensing revenue

$104 million from AI companies2023→$203 million2025

+16% in a year

The photo business has been weak since 2023, and sales fell 17% in mid-2026. Its planned merger with Getty fell apart in July 2026.

Shutterstock 10-Q Q2 2026

Quora

Pivoted
$75 million raised in January 2024, earmarked for Poe, its chatbot aggregator2024

Quora is private, so there are no checked user numbers. That's why it isn't in the shrunk list, whatever the traffic guessers say.

Slate, February 2024

Klarna

Pivoted

Staff

7,4002021→about 3,000, now rehiring humans2025

-59%

In February 2024 Klarna said its AI was doing the work of 700 agents. By 2025 its boss said quality had suffered.

“lower quality”Sebastian Siemiatkowski, boss, 2025, on what the AI-first cost push produced
Klarna statements; Silicon Canals

Teleperformance

Pivoted

Market value

$26 billion2021→about $5 billion; revenue flat at €10.2 billion2026

-80% value, 0% revenue

Its shares fell 19% on the day Klarna made its AI claim. The company says that's not why, and its sales haven't fallen.

Bloomberg; Teleperformance results

Tripadvisor

Pivoted

Brand Tripadvisor revenue

-8% in Q3 2025, 'declines across every revenue stream'; group up on Viator2025

-8%

Its filings blame less traffic from Google, without naming AI. The rest of the group grew, thanks to Viator.

Tripadvisor 10-Q Q3 2025

Keywords Studios

Pivoted

Share price, games localisation

halved by May 2024; taken private by EQT at £24.502024

-50%

The business itself didn't collapse. The share price did, on fear that AI would take its translation work.

Irish Times

Unbabel

Pivoted

Staff at an AI translation company

66 laid off (about 25%), sold to TransPerfect2025

-25%

An AI translation company, squeezed by bigger AI translation.

ECO, 19 February 2025

Grammarly

Pivoted

Daily users

30 million2021→40 million; $1bn raised May 2025; renamed Superhuman Oct 20252025

+33%

It grew, raised a billion dollars and changed its name to Superhuman.

Grammarly announcements; BetaKit

Said to be dying, still growing

Thirteen things that were meant to die, and grew.

In 2016 the AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said we should "stop training radiologists". In 2025 US hospitals filled a record 1,208 radiology training places, and the average radiologist earned $520,000.

“it's quite obvious that we should stop training radiologists”

Geoffrey Hinton, 2016

Duolingo was meant to be killed by chatbots. It went from 16 million daily users to 59 million, and the owl is fine.

US software developer jobs grew 10% from 2022 to 2025, while the government's separate "computer programmer" job fell 31%. So whether AI killed coding depends on which line of the spreadsheet you read.

Data scientists are up 64% and paralegals 14%. Translators have been flat since 2022. They did lose 12% between 2019 and 2022, but that was Google Translate.

Computer programmers 132,740 → 92,230 people 2019 2025 -31% Software developers 1,534,790 → 1,687,890 people 2022 2025 +10% Data scientists 159,630 → 262,440 people 2022 2025 +64%

US employment, from the government's yearly count. Programmers and developers are separate jobs in the same survey.

Duolingo daily active users (millions) Shareholder letters 2021-Q1 2026-Q2 +260% Reddit daily active uniques (millions) S-1 and 10-K 2023-Q1 2026-Q2 +116% Interpreters and translators 52,160 → 52,060 people 2019 2025 0% Paralegals and legal assistants 345,240 → 392,880 people 2019 2025 +14% Photographers 47,380 → 51,760 people 2019 2025 +9% Market research analysts 798,620 → 899,580 people 2019 2025 +13%

Google had 92.2% of the world's searches in November 2022 and 89.9% in September 2026. That's a couple of points, against a chatbot with 800 million weekly users, and most of the couple of points went to Bing.

Google's share of searches worldwide, StatCounter · September 2026: 90%

25 50 75 100 2020 2022 2024 2026 ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022 · that month: 92 Sep 2026: 90%
25 50 75 100 2020 2024 ChatGPT

Duolingo

Grew

Daily active users

16.3 millionQ4 2022→58.7 millionQ2 2026

+260%

It cut about a tenth of its contractors at the end of 2023. In April 2025 it published an "AI-first" memo, then partly walked it back.

Duolingo shareholder letters, 22 quarters

Reddit

Grew

Daily active uniques

60.3 millionQ1 2023→130.3 millionQ2 2026

+116%

Much of the growth came from Google showing Reddit higher in search. About $140 million of 2025 revenue came from letting AI companies use its posts.

Reddit S-1 and 10-K

GitHub

Grew

Developers

100 millionearly 2023→over 180 millionOct 2025

+80%

36 million people joined in the year to August 2025, its fastest growth ever, by its own count.

GitHub Octoverse 2025 (self-reported)

Software developers (US)

Grew

People employed

1,534,7902022→1,687,8902025

+10%

The government's separate "computer programmer" job fell 31% over the same years. So whether AI killed coding depends on which line you read.

BLS OEWS, occupations 15-1252 and 15-1251

Radiologists

Grew

Residency places filled (US)

a record 1,208; average pay $520,000, up 48% on 20152025
“it's quite obvious that we should stop training radiologists”Geoffrey Hinton, 2016
Works in Progress, September 2025

Translators (US)

Grew

People employed

52,1602022→52,0602025

flat

The drop people remember happened between 2019 and 2022, and that was Google Translate. Surveys are harsher: 36% of translators in one UK group said they'd lost work to AI.

BLS OEWS, occupation 27-3091; Society of Authors

Google Search

Grew

Share of searches worldwide

92.2%Nov 2022→89.9%Sep 2026

-2.3 points

It dipped under 90% in October 2024 for the first time since 2015. Most of what it lost went to Bing.

StatCounter monthly

Wiktionary

Grew

Pages read by people a month, English

71 millionJan to Nov 2022→90 million2026

+26%

Readers went up while Wikipedia's went down.

Wikimedia pageviews API, pulled by us

Dying before ChatGPT

These were falling years before ChatGPT, so the dotted line matters most here.

Telemarketing jobs are down 57% since 2019, which is robocalls and do-not-call lists. Typists have been disappearing for 30 years. Medical transcription has been losing to speech software since about 2010, and ad sales jobs went to automated ad buying.

AI may be speeding some of these up, and the dotted lines show how much. Putting telemarketers on a list of AI's victims would still be cheating.

Telemarketers 96,520 → 58,430 people 2019 2025 -39% Word processors and typists 41,990 → 35,010 people 2019 2025 -17% Medical transcriptionists 48,680 → 41,550 people 2019 2025 -15%

US employment, from the government's yearly count. Each of these was falling before November 2022 and kept falling at about the same speed.

Telemarketers (US)

Started before ChatGPT

People employed

134,8002019→58,4302025

-57%

Robocalls and do-not-call lists did this. The line falls at the same speed before and after 2022.

BLS OEWS, occupation 41-9041

Computer programmers (US)

Started before ChatGPT

People employed

199,5402019→92,2302025

-54%

A third of the fall came before ChatGPT. The steepest single year was 2024 to 2025, down 16%, so this one started early and then sped up.

BLS OEWS, occupation 15-1251

Medical transcriptionists (US)

Started before ChatGPT

People employed

55,7802019→41,5502025

-26%

Speech software has been taking this job since the 2000s.

BLS OEWS, occupation 31-9094

Word processors and typists (US)

Started before ChatGPT

People employed

47,4602019→35,0102025

-26%

A slow fall over thirty years, with no break in 2022.

BLS OEWS, occupation 43-9022

Advertising sales agents (US)

Started before ChatGPT

People employed

129,7402019→91,7002025

-29%

Automated ad buying did this before any chatbot.

BLS OEWS, occupation 41-3011

What I left out

Yahoo Answers closed in May 2021 and Kite, an AI coding tool, closed in November 2022, both before ChatGPT. CodeProject, a 25-year-old coding site, went offline in 2026, but its owner blamed the ad market.

Gengo, the translation site, hasn't closed, and is moving into Lionbridge in January 2027. Experts Exchange, Tek-Tips and Photomath are all still running. BuzzFeed News, CNET and Course Hero cut staff in 2023, and each said it wasn't AI.

Quora, WebMD, W3Schools and wikiHow are private and don't publish numbers, so I can't tell you what happened to them, and I'm not going to guess.

The case against

Not everyone thinks AI is costing jobs yet. In September 2026 the New York Fed asked service companies, and 4% said they'd laid people off because of AI while 13% said they'd hired more.

The New York Fed also found job ads in AI-exposed work were already falling before ChatGPT, with no jump after. Yale's Budget Lab says the US job market isn't changing any faster than it did when computers arrived.

What AI actually replaced

A homework subscription, a coding forum, essay writers in Nairobi, twelve-week bootcamps and a few voice assistants. The things next to those shrank: Q&A sites, freelance writing, call centres, proofreading, and the first job of a lot of 22-year-olds.

Doctors, developers and paralegals, the jobs everyone buried in 2023, mostly grew. And several of the famous AI deaths started before anyone had typed a prompt.

If you have a document that says I've missed something or got something wrong, email me and the list will change.

Long Story Short

Every day there is one true news story, and you cut its sentence down to five of its own words. It takes about two minutes, there is a Hard mode, and the streak is the part people come back for.

Play today's sentenceApp StoreGoogle Play

How this was made. Stack Overflow questions came from the Stack Exchange API, one call per month, counting questions still live on the site. Wikipedia figures came from the Wikimedia pageviews API with the agent set to user, both for whole projects and for the 120 articles in the baskets: Science: Photosynthesis, Mitochondrion, Cell (biology), DNA, Newton's laws of motion, Gravity, Periodic table, Atom, Osmosis, Evolution, Plate tectonics, Water cycle, Electromagnetism, Enzyme, Thermodynamics; Maths: Pythagorean theorem, Quadratic equation, Derivative, Integral, Prime number, Standard deviation, Logarithm, Trigonometry, Matrix (mathematics), Normal distribution, Fibonacci sequence, Probability, Pi, Mean, Fraction; History: World War II, French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Cold War, Roman Empire, American Civil War, Renaissance, World War I, Ancient Egypt, Mughal Empire, Great Depression, Russian Revolution, Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Empire, Partition of India; Grammar: Metaphor, Simile, Noun, Verb, Adjective, Alliteration, Irony, Onomatopoeia, Oxymoron, Personification, Hyperbole, Synonym, Idiom, Preposition and postposition, Haiku; Programming: Python (programming language), JavaScript, SQL, Recursion (computer science), Object-oriented programming, Big O notation, Linked list, Hash table, Regular expression, Binary search algorithm, Quicksort, HTML, C (programming language), API, Git; Health: Migraine, Common cold, Influenza, Hypertension, Diabetes, Asthma, Anxiety, Insomnia, Appendicitis, Vitamin D, Depression (mood), Allergy, Gastroesophageal reflux disease, Anemia, Eczema; Evergreen celebrities: Taylor Swift, Tom Cruise, Beyoncé, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Elon Musk, Shah Rukh Khan, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, Keanu Reeves, Rihanna, Virat Kohli, Brad Pitt; Evergreen entertainment: Harry Potter, Friends, The Office (American TV series), Star Wars, Game of Thrones, The Simpsons, Breaking Bad, Titanic (1997 film), The Godfather, Pokémon, Minecraft, The Lord of the Rings, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Seinfeld, Toy Story. Job postings are Indeed Hiring Lab's public CSVs, seven-day indices, read on 9 October 2026. Employment counts are the BLS national OEWS spreadsheets for May 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Hacker News counts are from the Algolia HN API, filtered to submissions with two or more points because raw 2026 counts include spam. Search shares are StatCounter's monthly CSV. Every company figure is from the filing or results release linked on its card. Dotted lines are a straight-line fit of the pre-launch months, extended, and are a baseline for the eye, not a forecast. Logos are the companies' own marks, used to identify them. Corrections to akash@sheets.works.

Sources

  1. Stack Overflow questions per month, Stack Exchange API
  2. Wikipedia pageviews, edits and editors, Wikimedia REST API
  3. Wikimedia Foundation on the 2025 decline in human pageviews
  4. Chegg annual report 2025 (10-K)
  5. Chegg Q2 2026 results
  6. Chegg shares fall 48% after naming ChatGPT, CNBC, 2 May 2023
  7. Kenya's essay writers, New York Times via Boston Globe, 5 Sep 2026
  8. Essay mill revenue, The Cheat Sheet
  9. Essay mill web traffic tracker
  10. Neil Clarke, A concerning trend, 15 Feb 2023
  11. Asimov's editorial on AI submissions
  12. BloomTech closure, Course Report
  13. General Assembly ends consumer enrolment
  14. SignalFire State of Talent 2025
  15. Canaries in the Coal Mine, Stanford Digital Economy Lab
  16. ADP Canaries dashboard, August 2026
  17. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, national files 2019 to 2025
  18. Appen customer update, 22 Jan 2024
  19. Appen FY25 results
  20. Remotasks cuts off Kenya, Rest of World
  21. Jasper valuation cut
  22. Microsoft, end of support for Cortana
  23. Naver Knowledge iN, Korea JoongAng Daily, 31 May 2025
  24. Korea's creative and language workers, Korea Times, 24 Apr 2026
  25. Zhihu Q4 2024 results
  26. NerdWallet Q1 2025 10-Q
  27. Fiverr 20-F 2025
  28. Fiverr Q2 2026 results
  29. Hui, Reshef and Zhou, generative AI and online freelancing
  30. Bloomberry, 5 million Upwork postings
  31. Teutloff et al., winners and losers of generative AI on freelance platforms (via CSH)
  32. RWS FY25 results statement, 11 Dec 2025
  33. Call-centre employment, Revelio Labs via a16z
  34. Indeed Hiring Lab job postings tracker (CSV)
  35. Indeed Hiring Lab, AI and job postings, July 2026
  36. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, September 2026 report
  37. Amazon, Andy Jassy on generative AI, 17 Jun 2025
  38. Amazon workforce reduction memo, 28 Oct 2025
  39. HN Algolia search API
  40. Dani Horowitz on DaniWeb, Coderanch
  41. Prosus on Stack Overflow revenue growth, via Gigazine, 8 Jan 2026
  42. Reddit 10-K 2025
  43. Shutterstock Q2 2026 10-Q
  44. Wiley 10-K FY26
  45. Grammarly becomes Superhuman, BetaKit
  46. Klarna rehires humans
  47. Why AI isn't replacing radiologists, Works in Progress, Sep 2025
  48. Duolingo Q2 FY26 shareholder letter
  49. StatCounter search engine market share
  50. CodeProject
  51. New York Fed, businesses are using AI to transform work, not cut jobs, Sep 2026
  52. New York Fed, do job postings show early labor market effects of AI, May 2026
  53. Yale Budget Lab, evaluating the impact of AI on the labor market