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Measuring the impact of AI on experienced open-source developer productivity

(metr.org)
688 points dheerajvs | 9 comments | 10 Jul 25 16:29 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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NewsaHackO ◴[10 Jul 25 17:15 UTC] No.44523209[source]▶
So they paid developers 300 x 246 = about 73K just for developer recruitment for the study, which is not in any academic journal, or has no peer reviews? The underlying paper looks quite polished and not overtly AI generated so I don't want to say it entirely made up, but how were they even able to get funding for this?
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narush ◴[10 Jul 25 17:36 UTC] No.44523443[source]▶
Our largest funding was through The Audacious Project -- you can see an announcement here: https://metr.org/blog/2024-10-09-new-support-through-the-aud...

Per our website, “To date, April 2025, we have not accepted compensation from AI companies for the evaluations we have conducted.” You can check out the footnote on this page: https://metr.org/donate

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1. iLoveOncall ◴[10 Jul 25 17:45 UTC] No.44523551[source]▶
This is really disingenuous when you also say that OpenAI and Anthropic have provided you with access and compute credits (on https://metr.org/about).

Not all payment is cash. Compute credits is still by all means compensation.

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2. gtsop ◴[10 Jul 25 17:52 UTC] No.44523633[source]▶
Are you willing to be compensated with compute credits for your job?

Such companies spit out "credits" all over the place in order to gain traction and enstablish themselves. I remember when cloud providers gave vps credits to startups like they were peanuts. To me, it really means absolutelly nothing.

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3. bawolff ◴[10 Jul 25 18:16 UTC] No.44523924[source]▶
I wouldn't do my job for $10, but if somehow someone did pay me $10 to do something, i wouldn't claim i wasn't compensated.

In-kind compensation is still compensation.

4. iLoveOncall ◴[10 Jul 25 18:26 UTC] No.44524008[source]▶
> Are you willing to be compensated with compute credits for your job?

Well, yes? I use compute for some personal projects so I would be absolutely fine if a part of my compensation was in compute credits.

As a company, even more so.

5. dolebirchwood ◴[10 Jul 25 18:57 UTC] No.44524298[source]▶
Is it "really" disingenuous, or is it just a misinterpretation of what it means to be "compensated for"? Seems more like quibbling to me.
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6. golly_ned ◴[10 Jul 25 19:30 UTC] No.44524647[source]▶
Those are compute credits that are directly spent on the experiment itself. It's no more "compensation" than a chemistry researcher being "compensated" with test tubes.
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7. iLoveOncall ◴[10 Jul 25 19:59 UTC] No.44524871[source]▶
I was actually being kind by saying it's disingenuous. I think it's an outright lie.
8. iLoveOncall ◴[10 Jul 25 20:02 UTC] No.44524898[source]▶
> Those are compute credits that are directly spent on the experiment itself.

You're extrapolating, it's not saying this anywhere.

> It's no more "compensation" than a chemistry researcher being "compensated" with test tubes.

Yes, that's compensation too. Thanks for contributing another example. Here's another one: it's no more compensation than a software engineer being compensated with a new computer.

Actually the situation here is way worse than your example. Unless the chemistry researcher is commissioned by Big Test Tube Corp. to conduct research on the outcome of using their test tubes, there's no conflict of interest here. But there is an obvious conflict of interest on AI research being financed by credits given by AI companies to use their own AI tools.

9. rsynnott ◴[11 Jul 25 10:40 UTC] No.44530608[source]▶
While it would be an ethical concern if they _hadn't_ disclosed it, it's not compensation; it was used _as part of the study_.