[narush]

The instructions given to developers was not just "implement with AI" - but rather that they could use AI if they deemed it would be helpful, but indeed did _not need to use AI if they didn't think it would be helpful_. In about ~16% of labeled screen recordings where developers were allowed to use AI, they choose to use no AI at all!

That being said, we can't rule out that the experiment drove them to use more AI than they would have outside of the experiment (in a way that made them less productive). You can see more in section "Experimentally driven overuse of AI (C.2.1)" [1]

[1] https://metr.org/Early_2025_AI_Experienced_OS_Devs_Study.pdf