Developers use AI at scale, GitHub says

A whopping 92% of US-based developers use AI tools for coding. AI is expected to help prevent burnout and increase productivity.

GitHub, a code hosting platform, surveyed 500 developers at companies with over 1,000 employees to better understand the typical developer experience and identify ways to improve it.

“Ultimately, the way to innovate at scale is to empower developers by improving their productivity, increasing their satisfaction, and enabling them to do their best work — every day. After all, there can be no progress without developers who are empowered to drive impact,” said Inbal Shani, Chief Product Officer at GitHub.

The survey, conducted in partnership with Wakefield Research, reveals that a staggering number of developers — 92% — are already using AI tools either at work or in their leisure time.

Developers are testing AI not out of pure curiosity or, what GitHub called, an idle interest. 70% of them are seeing significant benefits from using AI tools. They help improve code quality, meet or exceed existing performance standards, and reduce the number of production-level incidents.

According to the GitHub write-up of the research results, despite industry-wide investments in DevOps, developers complain about the most time-consuming task — waiting on code reviews, builds, or tests.

“Developers want to upskill, design solutions, get feedback from end users, and be evaluated on their communication skills. However, wait times on builds and tests, as well as the current performance metrics they’re evaluated on, are getting in the way,” GitHub said.

Developers are relying on AI to improve their individual performance. However, they also believe that AI can improve collaboration within organizations.

“Security reviews, planning, and pair programming are the most significant points of collaboration and the tasks that development teams are expected to, and should, work on with the help of AI coding tools. This also indicates that code and security reviews will remain important as developers increase their use of AI coding tools in the workplace,” GitHub added.

Developers also believe AI tools will help them improve their own coding skills, reduce cognitive effort and even prevent burnout.

“Notably, developers say the top benefit of AI coding tools is learning new skills — and these tools can help developers learn while they work, instead of making learning and development an additional task.”