What Actually Happens When Programmers Use AI Is Hilarious, According to a New Study

AI has taken the programming world by storm, with a flurry of speculation about the tech replacing human coders, and Google’s CEO recently claiming that 25 percent of the company’s code is now AI-generated.

But it’s possible that in practice, AI is actually hindering efficient software development. As flagged by *Ars Technica, a new study from the nonprofit Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) found that in practice, programmers are actually *slower when using AI assistance tools than making do without them.

This isn’t the first time that the narrative of AI’s dominance in coding has been rattled by research findings. Earlier this year, for instance, OpenAI researchers released a paper declaring, based on benchmarking tests from real-world coding tasks, that even the most advanced large language models “are still unable to solve the majority” of problems.

AI is also giving rise to other unintended consequences in the world of software development. Untrained programmers who engage in so-called “vibe coding,” or writing and fixing code by describing what they want to an AI, are not only screwing up their work itself, but also self-sabotaging by introducing severe cybersecurity risks to the finished product as well.