# Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026 AI trust | Miyagami > Before Stack Overflow's 2026 results, a look at 2025, when AI use rose to 84% and trust fell to 29%, and what it means for hiring engineers. Source: https://www.miyagami.com/resources/news/developers-use-ai-more-and-trust-it-less [Home](https://www.miyagami.com/)/ [Resources](https://www.miyagami.com/resources)/ [News](https://www.miyagami.com/resources/news)/ AI use rose to 84% as trust fell to 29%, says Stack Overflow # AI use rose to 84% as trust fell to 29%, says Stack Overflow Stack Overflow's 2026 Developer Survey results are due. In 2025, AI use among developers rose to 84% while trust in AI output fell to 29%. **[Dale Wesdorp](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-wesdorp/)** Co-founder, Miyagami News 2 min read 30 September 2026 Stack Overflow says results from its 2026 Developer Survey, which opened on 23 June 2026, are imminent. Its 2025 survey set the baseline, with AI usage among developers rising from 76% to 84% while trust in AI output fell from 40% to 29%. ## What the 2025 survey found Stack Overflow reported that 84% of developers used AI tools in 2025, up from 76% the year before. Over the same period, the share who trusted AI output dropped from 40% to 29%. The pattern was sharper among people learning to code. Stack Overflow found AI tool use in that group rose from 63.0% in 2024 to 73.3% in 2025, while favourable sentiment fell from 72.1% to 52.8%. A separate Stack Overflow survey on AI agents found agent usage had doubled while concerns about AI-generated code grew. ## Use and trust are moving apart Stack Overflow's figures show developers using AI more each year and believing its output less. Most keep using the tools regardless, so a growing share of the code in your repository is written by a model and then checked by a person who doesn't fully trust it. Stack Overflow's July 2026 post on tooling made a related point in its title, arguing that developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust. When the tool can't earn that trust on its own, the engineer reviewing its output has to supply it. ## What it means for engineering teams Your team's output now depends heavily on how well engineers read, test and reject generated code. Writing code got faster, and the slow, expensive part moved to deciding whether that code is correct, secure and maintainable. With agent usage doubling, according to Stack Overflow, engineers are reviewing larger changes they didn't write line by line. Teams that treat review as a formality ship the 71% of output their own developers say they don't trust, using Stack Overflow's 2025 trust figure as a rough guide. ## What it means when you hire engineers Verification is now the skill to test for in interviews. A candidate who produces a lot of code with an assistant tells you little about whether they'd spot a subtle bug in it, question a dependency it pulled in or notice it solved the wrong problem. You learn more by watching how someone works without AI, then how they direct and check their own agents on the same kind of task. The drop in favourable sentiment among learners, reported by Stack Overflow, also suggests newer developers are meeting AI before they've built the judgement to audit it. Our vetting runs two sixty-minute assessments in a real codebase. Assessment 1 has AI tools off. Assessment 2 has the candidate's own agents on, and both scorecards are shared with the client. We'll update this item when Stack Overflow publishes the 2026 results. The full assessment format is on [how we vet](https://www.miyagami.com/how-we-vet). Sources - [Stack Overflow, Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust](https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/07/29/developers-are-attached-to-tools-because-tools-encode-trust/), 29 July 2026 - [Stack Overflow, A look back before we look forward: a Developer Survey retrospective](https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/10/01/a-look-back-before-we-look-forward-a-developer-survey-retrospective/), 30 September 2026 - [Stack Overflow, The 2026 Developer Survey is now open](https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/06/23/the-2026-developer-survey-is-now-open-for-human-developers-only/), 23 June 2026 How we vet Every engineer we place goes through two assessments: one without AI tools, one with. Both scorecards are published. [How we vet](https://www.miyagami.com/how-we-vet) Hiring engineers? A shortlist of senior AI-native engineers in three working days. [Get a shortlist](https://www.miyagami.com/shortlist) ## More news [All news](https://www.miyagami.com/resources/news) [27 October 20263 min read ### Amazon rewrites its engineer role guideline around AI Read](https://www.miyagami.com/resources/news/amazon-rewrites-engineer-role-guideline-around-ai) [23 October 20262 min read ### 32% skipped a software purchase to build it with AI agents Read](https://www.miyagami.com/resources/news/32-percent-skipped-software-purchase-to-build-with-ai) [20 October 20262 min read ### 87% say AI speeds up work, but only 28% see less friction Read](https://www.miyagami.com/resources/news/ai-speeds-up-developers-but-friction-remains-atlassian) Let's talk ## Get a shortlist within three days You share the roles and the stack in a short form or a thirty-minute call. Within three working days you get named senior engineers to review, each with both scorecards, and you can hire within five. 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