2026-10-23 10:19 UTC
you’ll see that “slop” in the survey does not refer to AI-driven PRs in general, but to specifically low-quality AI-generated PRs.
This part is actually unclear. The question posed to survey participants that allowed researchers to determine a PR was “AI slop” is left out of the report. And this line under the chart showing “25% slop etc.” is troubling:
Average estimated percentage of incoming PRs that are low-quality and/or AI-generated
How this particular question was framed is of critical importance here and without it, it’s easy to assume that all reported AI use was broadly categorized as “slop”
Sadly I could not find a way to access the full list of questions used in the survey to confirm this.
Replies (1)
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@communism@lemmy.ml 2026-10-23 10:27
They aren’t specific about how the question was posed, no, but page 9’s wording does state that it is maintainer-estimated, and specifies the terms “low-quality” and “slop” as the qualifier for the 25% figure, so unless they’ve made a huge logical leap, I think it is reasonable to conclude that maintainers were specifically asked about low-quality AI-generated PRs (or “AI slop”). I think people are sensible enough these days to not deny that AIs sometimes produce acceptable code.