

you’ll see that “slop” in the survey does not refer to AI-driven PRs in general, but to specifically low-quality AI-generated PRs.
This part is actually unclear. The question posed to survey participants that allowed researchers to determine a PR was “AI slop” is left out of the report. And this line under the chart showing “25% slop etc.” is troubling:
Average estimated percentage of incoming PRs that are low-quality and/or AI-generated
How this particular question was framed is of critical importance here and without it, it’s easy to assume that all reported AI use was broadly categorized as “slop”
Sadly I could not find a way to access the full list of questions used in the survey to confirm this.
I’m not seeing it. This is the sole relevant statement on pg 9 where they simply define AI slop in a general way that avoids tying it in with their measurements:
In addition to the explicit ‘and/or general AI use’ statement, there are several red flags here that make me think this is a low quality study to be taken with salt. Or maybe I’m cynical and using the term ‘slop’ to push a research study is both unusual and suspect.