Developers Are Embracing AI—But Trusting It Less
Stack Overflow’s 2025 survey reveals a sharp rise in AI adoption — and a widening gap between usage and trust.
AI has become a go-to tool for writing code, but the developers using it are growing more skeptical of its output. New research from Stack Overflow reveals 84 percent of programmers saying they’re planning to or are using AI in their workflows, up eight points from last year. Yet nearly half—46 percent—say they no longer trust the accuracy of AI outputs, a sharp rise from 31 percent in 2024.
Stop With the AI Slop
“The growing lack of trust in AI tools stood out to us as the key data point in this year’s survey, especially given the increased pace of growth and adoption of these AI tools,” Prashanth Chandrasekar, Stack Overflow’s chief executive, remarks in a statement. “AI is a powerful tool, but it has significant risks of misinformation or can lack complexity or relevance.”
When it comes to software development, it might seem like the field is a prime use case for AI. It gave rise to the practice of vibe coding, in which AI models are used to generate software. In doing so, it lowers the barriers for anyone to build whatever solution they want. It almost sounded too perfect.
Turns out it is.
Developers are now complaining about the code quality produced by AI tools, citing the spread of so-called “AI slop” being generated. This forces a human coder to scrutinize and debug the bot’s work, something which 45 percent of survey respondents list as being “time-consuming.” It also runs counter to the hype that these AI tools can handle all the coding. Furthermore, when it comes to vibe coding, nearly 77 percent state that the practice is not part of their job description.
And despite more developers using these criticized AI tools, that doesn’t mean the output won’t go unnoticed. Respondents tell Stack Overflow that they’ll still ask another human being for help. Why? More than three-quarters (75.3 percent) don’t trust AI answers, 61.7 percent have ethical or security concerns about the code, and 61.3 percent want to “fully understand” their code.
“An approach that leans heavily on trustworthy, responsible use of data from curated knowledge bases is critical,” Chandrasekar claims. “By providing a trusted human intelligence layer in the age of AI, we believe the tech enthusiasts of today can play a larger role in adding value to build the AI technologies and products of tomorrow.”
In other words, human oversight remains essential. It appears developers don’t want to give AI free rein to check in new code or publish it live without someone vetting it for errors. And there’s indeed some cause for concern: last week, the vibe coding tool Replit erroneously deleted a company’s entire database and stated that it couldn’t restore it. And when AI cannot accomplish the tasks it’s trained to do correctly, it can lead to scheduling delays, budgeting issues, and other complications. Bottom line: It could be costly to fix.
Developers Still Confident in Job Security
Despite frustrations with AI-generated code, developers aren’t sounding the alarm on job security, at least not yet. While headlines may warn of automation displacing workers, Stack Overflow’s data tells a more measured story: 64 percent of developers say they don’t view AI as a threat to their jobs, a slight four-point drop from last year. That decrease could reflect growing awareness of AI’s limitations, and perhaps even a bit of confidence that human developers aren’t going anywhere.
The New IDEs on the Block Worth Watching
AI isn’t changing what developers code—it’s also influencing where they do it. As AI tools become more embedded in the software development process, some developers are gravitating towards environments that are AI-first. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio still lead the pack, but they’re followed by AI IDEs, Cursor (18 percent), Anthropic’s Claude Code (10 percent), and Windsurf (5 percent).
That list, however, could be impacted by consolidation happening in the AI space. For example, Stack Overflow’s survey was likely completed before Windsurf’s acquisition by Cognition and Cursor’s purchase of the AI-powered CRM startup Koala.