- 30.1% of the US Python code is written by AI coding assistants
- Newer developers are even more likely to use AI
- Technical companies also use more AI-generated code
A new research document entitled “Who uses AI to code? Global diffusion and effect of generative AI” has found that US software developers are the most intensive users of AI coding assistants globally.
In December 2024, artificial intelligence is assumed to have generated almost one in three (30.1%) Python features of American developers on GitHub.
This puts us developers far ahead of their global colleagues with regard to AI use, with countries such as German (24.3%), France (23.2%), India (21.6%), Russia (15.4%) and China (11.7%) hanging behind.
US developers use AI coding assistants the most
The researchers also noted that more experienced developers are less likely to use AI (28%) compared to newer GitHub users (41%), which may be more susceptible to the latest additions of the platform.
Despite coming with huge productivity promises, AI does not seem to have had such a big impact.
Moving to 30% AI-generated code is correlated only with an increase of 2.4% in quarterly obligations. The researchers place the economic value of AI-assisted coding in the United States everywhere between $ 9.6 billion and $ 96 billion annually, depending on the realistic productivity gains seen.
Dogiotti et al. However, noticed by AI use could be linked to greater experimentation, with an increase of 2.2% in new libraries and an increase of 3.5% in new library combinations that observed, suggesting that technology could help developers expand to new programming areas.
The trend correlates with large tech companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, which now admits that a large proportion (up to about a third) of their code, depending on project and use case, is generated by AI.
In the event of this study, however, the researchers admitted that the analysis focuses solely on Open Source Python projects on GitHub, therefore the model effectively assumes that AI-use rates in Python are seen across other languages.
They still hope that quantified research can help AI skeptics make better informed decisions about how they see themselves using AI and its effects in the labor market.
