Artificial Intelligence

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The questions in this section were answered by those who decided to continue taking the survey after the main question section ended.

As this was the first time we asked questions about AI in the Developer Ecosystem Survey, the section does not provide comparisons with previous years.

In general, developers appear to be rather optimistic about the rapid advancements in AI and are actively using its capabilities in their work.

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Maria Khalusova

Member of Technical Staff, Hugging Face

It’s encouraging to see the developer community is mostly enthusiastic toward the application of AI-based tools to software development. At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge the presence of security and ethical concerns. This serves as a testament to the community's awareness of the existing limitations and potential hazards associated with these technologies. A key to addressing these concerns lies in advocating for greater transparency in the way AI systems are made available. Fully open AI models – and entire systems – enable community scrutiny that helps identify potential issues and contributes to continuous improvements in these systems. Ultimately, this makes AI-based tools both more useful and more trustworthy.

What types of generative AI tools are you familiar with?

69%

Text generation tools

60%

Code generation tools

39%

Image generation tools

5%

Music generation tools

5%

Video generation tools

1%

Other

16%

None

84%

of developers are familiar with generative AI tools in one way or another.

Interestingly, AI text generative tools are more familiar to developers than code generative tools, which might be attributable to the popularity and accessibility of ChatGPT.

84%

of developers are familiar with generative AI tools in one way or another.

Svetlana Zemlyanskaya

Team Lead in Machine Learning in IDE Assistance, JetBrains

In just a couple of years, AI-based code generation tools went from being an interesting research topic to being an important part of many developers' toolboxes. We’ll continue monitoring this trend closely to see how it evolves.

What stops you from learning about generative AI tools?

43%

Nothing. I am planning to try them in the near future

20%

I have security concerns / company security policy

11%

I see no value in them

10%

I have never heard of them

8%

They are too complicated for me

5%

They are not accessible for me

4%

Other

*This question was shown only to the developers who chose “None” in the previous question.

Only 1.6% of all respondents have never heard of generative AI tools, and slightly less than half of those who have not yet familiarized themselves with generative AI tools plan to do so in the near future.

Security concerns are the most frequently cited obstacle to the adoption of generative AI tools.

Svetlana Zemlyanskaya

Team Lead in Machine Learning in IDE Assistance, JetBrains

Most solutions still require sending data to the cloud, which makes them a security risk, but the market is already responding with local and on-premises solutions.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?

AgreeNeither agree nor disagreeDisagree
59%30%11%I have security concerns about using generative AI services
53%30%16%I am ready to use cloud-based generative AI services for work tasks
42%33%25%I have ethical concerns about using generative AI services
40%40%20%Local or offline AI tools are unlikely to reach the quality and performance of cloud-based solutions
28%35%37%My company’s policy limits the use of cloud-based AI tools
19%37%43%I am worried that AGI (artificial general intelligence) will be hostile to humans
11%59%

Our respondents appear to have a positive view of AGI (artificial general intelligence) in general. Less than one-fifth of them are worried that AGI will become hostile to humans. However, 6 out of 10 respondents have security concerns about using AI.

Svetlana Zemlyanskaya

Team Lead in Machine Learning in IDE Assistance, JetBrains

Large language models have created many ethical issues that are yet to be addressed, like the source of training datasets, fair use of open-source code, and others.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements about the future of AI-powered code generation?

AgreeNeither agree nor disagreeDisagree
60%30%10%AI coding tools will radically change the software development job market
51%33%16%The adoption of AI coding will raise the demand for professional software developers
51%29%20%Some industries will never adopt AI coding
49%37%15%Employers will expect every software developer to be proficient with AI coding tools
33%34%33%The majority of coding will turn into prompt engineering
13%27%61%AI will fully write code instead of developers
10%61%

Despite the fact that 3 out of 5 respondents believe AI coding tools will radically change the software development job market, only 13% are confident that AI is going to fully write code in place of developers. Nevertheless, about one-third believe that software engineering is bound to turn into prompt engineering.

In general, developers are rather optimistic and believe that AI will become a new additional tool to help them write code as opposed to something that will replace them entirely.

What types of generative AI tools do you currently use?

69%

Cloud-based services

13%

Local or offline solutions

10%

Cloud-based solutions managed by you or your organization

3%

Other

21%

I don’t know

The majority of developers use the potent generative AI cloud-based solutions – cloud-based services or solutions managed by the respondent’s organization.

Svetlana Zemlyanskaya

Team Lead in Machine Learning in IDE Assistance, JetBrains

Local and on-premises solutions are already emerging, but the final quality is often worse than that of cloud-based solutions. While the quality is improving across the board, the gap between local and cloud-based solutions will probably remain unbridged for the next couple of years.

What is your experience with the following AI tools?

I use itI tried it, but don’t use it nowI don’t use it
77%20%3%ChatGPT
46%33%21%GitHub Copilot
26%50%25%Midjourney
26%15%59%Visual Studio IntelliCode
21%42%37%OpenAI DALL-E
17%21%62%Dream Studio (Stable Diffusion)
9%20%71%Tabnine
7%11%81%Pictory
7%17%76%Synthesia
5%9%85%Amazon CodeWhisperer
4%7%89%CopyAI
4%8%88%AIVA
4%10%86%Soundraw
4%7%88%Boomy
3%5%91%Codeium
3%11%85%Kite
2%7%90%Jasper
2%6%92%Replit Ghostwriter
1%3%96%Sourcegraph Cody
1%3%96%Atlassian Intelligence
1%96%

Developers are using general AI text generative tools more often than they do specialized AI code generative tools. However, since the latest AI text generative tools, such as ChatGPT, are also capable of writing code, developers may be using them for this purpose. The specialized tools mentioned above seem to be drawing interest, but whether it's because of imperfect integration with the workflows or generic approaches, few developers are sticking with them at this time.

How frequently do you use the following features of the existing AI assistants for coding?

Quite oftenFrom time to timeRarelyNever
26%33%17%24%Asking general questions about software development in natural languages
24%37%24%15%Generating code
19%26%22%33%Generating code comments or code documentation
18%26%21%36%Explaining bugs and offering fixes for them
14%27%22%37%Explaining the code
12%21%24%42%Generating tests
11%21%19%48%Search in natural language queries for code fragments
9%17%21%53%Performing code review
9%16%19%55%Summarizing recent code changes to understand what happened more quickly
9%20%23%47%Refactoring code
9%17%20%54%Generating CLI commands by natural language description
6%12%20%62%Generating commit messages
6%62%

The most common way for developers to use an AI assistant is to ask general questions about software development using natural language.

How frequently do you use AI tools for the following tasks?

RegularlyFrom time to timeNever
35%47%18%Learning new things
26%44%29%Brainstorming and evaluating ideas
24%42%34%Summarizing content
23%35%42%Proofreading content (e.g. fixing spelling and grammar mistakes)
21%34%45%Rewriting content in a desired style (e.g. more friendly or more consistent with your company’s brand voice)
21%36%44%Translating texts
20%39%40%Generating content not directly related to code (websites, release notes, tweets, etc.)
11%21%69%Preventing the use of inappropriate language
11%69%

AI tools are popular learning assistance and brainstorming buddies. They are also useful for summarizing and proofreading content. As far as generating non-code content, only 20% of our respondents regularly use AI tools for that purpose.

The most time-consuming activities

79%

Writing code

47%

Understanding the code

31%

Internet searches

30%

Debugging

29%

Writing code comments or code documentation

21%

Writing tests

16%

Performing code reviews

*Shares of respondents that selected each activity as one of their three most time-consuming activities.

Writing code takes the top spot as the most time-consuming activity, though it is also the most enjoyable one for our respondents (see the chart below). Spending most of your time doing something you enjoy – isn’t that the recipe for happiness?

How enjoyable / unpleasant do you find these activities?

EnjoyableNeither enjoyable nor unpleasantUnpleasant
82%14%3%Writing code
51%36%14%Understanding the code
45%36%18%Refactoring
40%49%11%Internet searches
35%50%15%Writing code comments or code documentation
34%43%24%Debugging
33%49%18%Performing code reviews
31%55%14%Performing actions in CLI
29%55%16%Understanding recent code changes
27%45%28%Writing tests
27%59%14%Writing commit messages
22%56%23%Searching for code fragments inside the codebase
3%82%

If writing code is a developer's most enjoyable activity, it’s natural that they’re not ready to delegate it to the AI tools!

How simple / difficult do you find these activities?

SimpleNeither simple nor difficultDifficult
54%38%8%Writing commit messages
54%39%8%Internet searches
46%43%11%Writing code comments or code documentation
40%48%11%Writing code
36%49%14%Searching for code fragments inside the codebase
36%53%11%Performing actions in CLI
26%58%16%Understanding recent code changes
25%51%25%Writing tests
25%56%19%Performing code reviews
24%54%22%Understanding the code
23%51%26%Refactoring
22%51%27%Debugging
8%58%

How likely is it that you would delegate the following activities to an AI assistant (in an ideal world where the performance of an AI assistant is humanlike)?

I would delegate itI am not sure yetI would still do it myself
56%23%21%Writing code comments or code documentation
56%26%18%Writing tests
55%26%19%Searching for code fragments inside the codebase
50%23%27%Writing commit messages
46%23%31%Internet searches
35%34%31%Performing actions in CLI
34%31%35%Performing code reviews
34%31%35%Refactoring
31%28%41%Understanding recent code changes
30%30%40%Debugging
23%26%51%Understanding the code
17%28%54%Writing code
17%56%

AI assistants are most commonly used to help developers perform routine tasks, like writing documentation, code comments, and commit messages, as well as searching. However, developers prefer to do their own coding, including understanding the code and recent code changes, debugging, and of course, writing code, even though 79% of the respondents mentioned that writing code is their most time-consuming activity.

Writing quality code is a difficult task, and generative AI coding tools are showing some evidence of making it less time intensive. While approximately one-third of developers surveyed remain unsure about delegating tasks to these tools, this doesn’t mean they aren’t using the tools to complete tasks collaboratively rather than completely outsourcing the work.

JetBrains AI Assistant

AI Assistant provides AI-powered features for software development. The JetBrains AI service transparently connects IDE users to different large language models (LLMs). AI Assistant is context-aware and helps developers complete their tasks faster, boosting productivity.

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