The AI effect

# The AI effect Source: [https://sheets.works/data-viz/the-ai-effect](https://sheets.works/data-viz/the-ai-effect) 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 56k112k168k224k2014201620182020202220242026ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022 · that month: 109kdotted: the 2014 to 2022 trend, 88k by nowSep 2026: 975 questions 56k112k168k224k201620202024ChatGPT 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 releases2019\-Q12025\-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](https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/questions)  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1364954/000136495426000021/chgg-20251231.htm) ### 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](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/05/business/kenyans-college-students-homework-ai/) 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](https://coursereport.com/schools/bloomtech)  ### 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](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/end-of-support-for-cortana-in-windows-d025b39f-ee5b-4836-a954-0ab646ee1efa) ### 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](https://restofworld.org/2024/scale-ai-remotasks-banned-workers/) ## 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\.5bn5bn7\.5bn10bn201620182020202220242026ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022 · that month: 7\.5bndotted: the 2016 to 2022 trend, 7\.1bn by nowSep 2026: 6\.3bn 2\.5bn5bn7\.5bn10bn201620202024ChatGPT 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 20242021\-Q12024\-Q4\-19%NerdWallet monthly users \(millions\)Quarterly; not reported after 20242021\-Q12024\-Q4\-21%Fiverr active buyers \(millions\)Quarterly earnings releases2020\-Q12026\-Q2\-37%RWS adjusted profit before tax \(£ millions\)FY25 results, 11 Dec 2025FY24FY25\-43%Appen revenue \(US$ millions\)ASX results; Google left Jan 202420212025\-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 representatives2,879,840 → 2,595,750 people20192025\-10%Data entry keyers157,380 → 127,080 people20192025\-19%Web developers88,620 → 70,190 people20222025\-21%News analysts, reporters and journalists44,530 → 39,250 people20192025\-12%Graphic designers211,890 → 197,830 people20192025\-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 animators35,990 → 19,970 people20192025\-45%Proofreaders and copy markers5,120 → 4,580 people20192025\-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 \(Stanford and ADP payroll data\) 81921031147020222023202420252026ChatGPT22–25, most AI\-exposed jobs: 87\.222–25, least exposed: 108\.1 921147020222023202420252026ChatGPTmost exposed: 87\.2least 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 10k21k31k42k202420252026Sep 2026: 4\.0k 10k21k31k42k202420252026 Challenger, Gray & Christmas monthly reports, May 2023 to September 2026\. Jan–May 2025 reports had no AI row\. 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](https://thecheatsheet.substack.com/p/the-absurd-herohood-of-professional) People employed 7,7302019→4,5802025 \-41% Proofreaders and copy markers, in the US government's job count\. [BLS OEWS national, May 2019 to May 2025](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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 \(estimates\)](https://www.maginative.com/article/jasper-cuts-internal-valuation-as-ai-growth-slows/)  ### 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](https://ppc.land/content/files/2024/01/APX_Customer_update_and_FY23_preliminary_results.pdf) ### 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](https://www.signalfire.com/blog/signalfire-state-of-talent-report-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](https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/10/17/new-user-trends-on-wikipedia/)  ### 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](https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/chatgpt-and-ai-tools-eclipse-community-knowledge-sharing-platforms/12397118)  ### 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](https://ir.zhihu.com/media/dygpwalz/4q-2024.pdf)  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1625278/000162527825000069/nrds-20250331.htm)  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001762301/000117891326000858/zk2634486.htm)  ### 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](https://data.fca.org.uk/artefacts/NSM/RNS/fe0bfbc1-efee-42b4-a2b9-e73e5df75a84.html) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) 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\.](https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2025/program/paper/T485kaTk) ### 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](https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/google-traffic-down-2025-trends-report-2026/) ### 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](https://github.com/hiring-lab/job_postings_tracker) ### 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](https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/project/indicators/canaries/) ### 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](https://www.challengergray.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Challenger-Report-September-2026-1.pdf) ## 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\.9k3\.7k0201820192020202120222023202420252026ChatGPTAsk HN: 736Show HN: 2,445 1\.9k3\.7k0201820192020202120222023202420252026ChatGPTAsk HN: 736Show 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 Quora**Poe, its chatbot aggregator** Klarna**7,400 staff to ~3,000, now rehiring** Teleperformance**revenue flat, market value $26bn to $5bn** Tripadvisor**brand site down 8%, Viator up** Keywords Studios**taken private on AI fear** Unbabel**an 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 2022**25** December 2022**50** January 2023**100** 1 to 15 February 2023**350** 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](https://neil-clarke.com/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](https://www.gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260108-stack-overflow-questions-drop)  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001549346/000154934626000029/sstk-20260630.htm)  ### 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](https://slate.com/technology/2024/02/quora-what-happened-ai-decline.html)  ### 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](https://siliconcanals.com/klarna-u-turns-on-ai-rehires-humans/)  ### 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](https://news.bloombergtax.com/artificial-intelligence/french-call-center-firm-plunges-on-ai-replacement-concerns-1)  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1526520/000119312525268047/trip-20250930.htm)  ### 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](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/06/28/eqt-moves-towards-21bn-takeover-of-uk-listed-keywords-studios)  ### 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](https://eco.sapo.pt/2025/02/19/unbabel-conclui-processo-de-despedimento-coletivo-em-portugal/)  ### 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](https://betakit.com/grammarly-rebrands-to-superhuman-as-it-expands-from-catching-typos-to-ai-productivity/) ## 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 programmers132,740 → 92,230 people20192025\-31%Software developers1,534,790 → 1,687,890 people20222025\+10%Data scientists159,630 → 262,440 people20222025\+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 letters2021\-Q12026\-Q2\+260%Reddit daily active uniques \(millions\)S\-1 and 10\-K2023\-Q12026\-Q2\+116%Interpreters and translators52,160 → 52,060 people201920250%Paralegals and legal assistants345,240 → 392,880 people20192025\+14%Photographers47,380 → 51,760 people20192025\+9%Market research analysts798,620 → 899,580 people20192025\+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% 2550751002020202220242026ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022 · that month: 92Sep 2026: 90% 25507510020202024ChatGPT  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001562088/000162828026053299/q2fy26duolingo6-30x26share.htm)  ### 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](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001713445/000171344526000062/redditinc10-k2025.pdf)  ### 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 \(self\-reported\)](https://github.blog/2025-10-28-octoverse-a-new-developer-joins-github-every-second-as-ai-leads-typescript-to-1/) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) People employed 159,6302022→262,4402025 \+64% [BLS OEWS, occupation 15\-2051](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) 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](https://worksinprogress.news/p/why-ai-isnt-replacing-radiologists) People employed 345,2402022→392,8802025 \+14% [BLS OEWS, occupation 23\-2011](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) People employed 47,3802022→51,7602025 \+9% [BLS OEWS, occupation 27\-4021](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm)  ### Getty Images Grew Revenue $926 million2022→$981 million, a record2025 \+6% [Getty Images results](https://www.barchart.com/story/news/779074/getty-images-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-results)  ### Khan Academy Grew Registered learners 189\.6 million, \+20\.9 million in a school year2025 [Khan Academy annual report](https://annualreport.khanacademy.org/)  ### 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](https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share)  ### 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](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/) ## 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\. Telemarketers96,520 → 58,430 people20192025\-39%Word processors and typists41,990 → 35,010 people20192025\-17%Medical transcriptionists48,680 → 41,550 people20192025\-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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ### 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](https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm) ## 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\. **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](mailto:[email protected])\.