The Linux Foundation has summarized the results of a survey involving 234 maintainers and developers of open projects, assessing the impact of AI tools on development. 59% of the maintainers noted an increase in the number of submitted changes, but about 25% of the pull requests were recognized as low-quality AI-generated fluff. When considering only major projects, 69% of respondents reported an increase in changes, while the share of AI fluff among pull requests was rated at 31%.
Among other trends:
- AI has accelerated task completion related to code writing,
according to 52% of respondents, and the discussion of proposals for 19%. However, 21% of respondents stated that the use of AI has only slowed down the resolution of very complex tasks. - 66% of respondents spend saved time on addressing technical debt, 63% on creating new functionality, and 58% on training.
- 71% of maintainers believe that AI lowers the entry barrier for contributing to open projects, but 53% think that the use of AI undermines community trust.
- 35% of projects explicitly stated in their rules the possibility of using AI, while 32% do not have such rules and do not plan to introduce them.
- 61% of development participants reported that before submitting changes, they conduct detailed reviews and comprehensive testing of the AI-generated code, although they do not always mention that they used AI.
- 46% of maintainers believe that AI increases the need for mentors for new contributors, while 32% think it decreases this need.
- 52% use generative AI tools daily, 23% almost every day, 20% weekly, 3% once a month, and 2% less than once a month.
- 20% of respondents do not use AI, 58% use AI for non-development tasks, while 59% use it for development-related tasks.
Source: opennet.ru
