Insight reports
GitHub data informs research and global indices on innovation, international development, and much more. Discover some of our latest contributions below, and check back regularly for future insight reports.
Octoverse: The state of open source and rise of AI in 2023
How open source activity around AI, the cloud, and Git has changed the developer experience and is increasingly driving impact among developers and organizations alike.
Open data on GitHub: Unlocking the potential of AI
Co-authored by researchers at GitHub and Microsoft, this paper analyzes the more than 800 million open data files, totaling 142 terabytes of data on GitHub. Findings show that GitHub is one of the largest hosts of open data in the world and has experienced an accelerated growth of open data assets over the past four years.
How AI-powered software development may affect labor markets
Co-authored by researchers at GitHub and MIT, this paper puts recent productivity research on AI-powered code generation tools including GitHub Copilot into context for what they may mean for developers’ jobs and policymakers focused on preparing the workforce for AI-induced changes.
NYU conference on the benefits and challenges of open source
GitHub has sponsored a conference on measuring the impact of open source software, gathering interdisciplinary scholars and policy stakeholders to review the state of the literature and explore research questions in need of attention.
LATAM AI Index
GitHub supported the Chilean National Center for Artificial Intelligence (CENIA) with public developer activity associated with AI projects on GitHub. This data contributed to CENIA’s Latin America AI Index.
Sea change in software development: Economic and productivity analysis of the AI-powered developer lifecycle
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke and HBS Professor Marco Iansiti co-authored a report examining the economic opportunity presented by AI-powered developer tools and early open source generative AI development trends on GitHub.
NBER Sponsorship
Following the technical preview launch of GitHub Copilot in 2021, GitHub funded programming from the National Bureau of Economic Research with the goal of expanding research on the labor implications of generative AI. Our sponsorship supported PhD student tutorials, a Summer Institute, and forthcoming conference.
Stanford AI Index
GitHub contributed data to the AI Index Report 2023 published by researchers at Stanford. Early productivity research on GitHub Copilot was also featured in the report.
CSIS government open source software policies dataset
GitHub supported researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies to revive their leading dataset on public policies regarding open source around the world. The dataset is openly available and new entries can be suggested in the dedicated repository.
WIPO Global Innovation Index
GitHub contributed data to the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index 2022. For the first time, it accounted for developer creative outputs based on GitHub commits as a measure of innovation, alongside patents, papers, and other measures.
OECD AI Policy Observatory
Since 2020, GitHub has contributed data on developer activity associated with AI repositories to the OECD AI Policy Observatory. Their dashboards offer policy stakeholders key analyses into international trends in AI research and development.