Widely touted study that finds AI tools make experienced programmers 19% slower is in reference to low level kernel code. There are 3 other major studies showing a 10% to 55% increase in speed from AI tools for general coding tasks.

We’ve all seen that one same study referenced like everywhere: "Study finds AI makes experienced devs 19% slower." Every AI cynic youtuber or tiktoker keeps mentioning this study when everyone at my company and everyone who codes realizes how insanely powerful it is. Including amazing programmers like Ryan Dahl and DHH. Here are the other studies I mentioned: The GitHub/Microsoft RCT (55.8% Faster): In one of the most famous controlled experiments, developers using AI completed tasks more than twice as fast as the control group. This wasn't just "feeling" faster; they actually finished the work in nearly half the time. Anthropic’s 2025 Internal Research (50% Boost): Analyzing their own engineers, Anthropic found a consistent 50% productivity boost. More interestingly, they noted that 27% of the work being done was stuff that wouldn't have happened at all without AI scaling projects and building "nice-to-have" internal tools that were previously too expensive to justify. Faros AI Teleme