Empirical Study of 622 GenAI Adopters on GitHub: AI Assistance Shifts Cost to Verification and Provider-API Dependency, Not Code Writing
Tsuchida, Fan, Shimari, Kula, Rodríguez-Pérez and Matsumoto analyzed 622 GitHub users who publicly signal GenAI adoption, 179 repositories carrying visible AI-assistance configuration files against 179 matched traditional repositories, plus 248 issues from the AI-assisted set. AI-assisted repos carry longer READMEs with more headers and code blocks while traditional repos carry more external URLs, and issues in AI-assisted repos disproportionately concern external dependencies such as API rate limits and reliance on GenAI provider APIs. The conclusion is that generative AI does not remove maintenance cost so much as relocate it toward verifying generated content, managing provider dependencies, and validating AI-specific behavior.
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