Preprint
The Impact of AI on Developer Productivity: Evidence from GitHub Copilot
Sida Peng et al., arXiv preprint, 2023
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A randomized controlled experiment in which professional developers built an HTTP server in JavaScript with or without the GitHub Copilot AI pair programmer. It reports the difference in completion time.
- How much weight it carries
- A randomized controlled trial, but a single bounded coding task, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 21 to 89 percent. It does not measure everyday typing or writing speed.
Facts taken from this source
- In the randomized GitHub Copilot experiment, the treated group completed the task 55.8 percent faster than the control group.
“the treated group completed the task 55.8% faster (95% confidence interval: 21-89%)” (Abstract and Section 3)