AI-Powered Devs Crush Deadlines: 19% Faster Task Completion in 2025

Forget caffeine—the real productivity hack is artificial intelligence. Experienced developers wielding AI tools are now finishing tasks nearly one-fifth faster than their analog counterparts, according to new data.

The secret sauce? Machine learning models that automate grunt work—letting engineers focus on architecture instead of boilerplate. No wonder VCs are dumping cash into AI coding assistants like there's no tomorrow (though at least this bubble actually produces working software).

Here's the kicker: These gains come from seasoned pros, not fresh grads. When battle-tested developers add AI to their toolkit, they're not just keeping pace—they're rewriting the playbook. The 19% speed boost? That's the sound of technical debt getting bulldozed.

Of course, Wall Street's still trying to monetize this trend by slapping 'AI-enhanced' on every SaaS startup—as if an algorithm could fix their broken revenue models. Meanwhile, actual engineers are quietly getting sh*t done.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about AI

The results have elicited surprise among developers on X, but the study’s lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, were shocked by them. Rush had expected “a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously” and had written that down before the experiment began.

Before now, there was widespread belief that AI makes human engineers far more productive, and several companies have invested substantially in companies selling AI products to aid software development based on those projections.

However, while the study has highlighted a false assumption, it has not changed the common fear of AI stealing human jobs. In fact, the shift has already begun, even in programming careers, with AI expected to replace entry-level coding positions.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, is one of those who shares this sentiment and believes it could happen in the next one to five years.

Unlike previous studies that encouraged the belief that AI would quicken coders and software developers because they reported significant gains, the METR study has shown that they don’t apply to all software development scenarios.

In particular, the study was able to prove that experienced developers who had intimate knowledge of the quirks and requirements of large, established open source codebases were the most affected.

The study’s authors have also pointed out that other studies are known to rely on software development benchmarks for AI, and they sometimes misrepresent real-world tasks.

As for what caused the coders to work more slowly, things like needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested were noted.

The authors do not expect this slowdown to apply in other scenarios, and despite the results,  the majority of the study’s participants, as well as the study’s authors, continue to use Cursor today.

Why? The authors say it is because AI makes the experience easier, which in turn, makes it feel less like a chore.

Software developers are not worried about AI, even with recent tech layoffs

Given how enthusiastic the METR study’s authors and the study’s participants are to forgive Claude for slowing them down, and their continued use of the tool, it is clear that more tech professionals see AI more as a collaborator rather than as a threat.

Unfortunately, there may be trouble on the horizon as the tech industry continues to witness layoffs explicitly linked to AI adoption at major companies.

This year, Microsoft has already dismissed up to 9,000 employees, with claims that 40% of the recent layoffs targeted software engineers because code-writing tasks were outsourced to AI tools.

The company has justified the layoffs with record-breaking profits that have kept its market cap hovering just behind Nvidia’s and ahead of Apple’s.

Google is another major tech company that has laid off hundreds of workers following its investment in AI startup Anthropic, though not all the dismissed workers were replaced with AI.

Other companies, like Salesforce and Intel, have also cited a shift towards AI in layoff announcements. Salesforce has cut 1,000 jobs this year to focus on AI roles, Intel has reduced its workforce by 15,000, and IBM plans to replace 30% of its back-office roles with AI by 2030.

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