  Advancements in Artificial Intelligence, particularly with ChatGPT, have
significantly impacted software development. Utilizing novel data from GitHub
Innovation Graph, we hypothesize that ChatGPT enhances software production
efficiency. Utilizing natural experiments where some governments banned
ChatGPT, we employ Difference-in-Differences (DID), Synthetic Control (SC), and
Synthetic Difference-in-Differences (SDID) methods to estimate its effects. Our
findings indicate a significant positive impact on the number of git pushes,
repositories, and unique developers per 100,000 people, particularly for
high-level, general purpose, and shell scripting languages. These results
suggest that AI tools like ChatGPT can substantially boost developer
productivity, though further analysis is needed to address potential downsides
such as low quality code and privacy concerns.
