Abstract: AI is rapidly transforming developer communities, reshaping how developers collaborate, share knowledge, and drive innovation. This talk explores the findings from our recent studies investigating the multifaceted impacts of AI-driven innovations on these communities including being able to leverage expert perspectives more easily, enable expansive creative uses, and better understand the scope of what LLM-based tools can successfully produce for the community. I will also explore how AI can facilitate better collaboration and knowledge sharing within & beyond developer communities while being reasonably critical of the challenges and ethical considerations that accompany these advancements. Finally, I will emphasize the importance of inclusive practices to ensure that the benefits of AI are accessible to a range of community members and highlight successful best practices being applied today.
Bio: Dr. Denae Ford Robinson is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in the SAINTes group and an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of Washington. Her research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. In her work, she identifies and dismantles cognitive and social barriers by designing mechanisms to support software developer participation in online socio-technical ecosystems. She is best known for her research on just-in-time mentorship as a mode to empower welcoming engagement in collaborative Q&A for online programming communities including open-source software and work to empower marginalized identity groups of software developers in online communities. Her most recent research investigates how to meaningfully engage software developers as they apply AI to their software development process and identify techniques to understand trust in AI-powered software tools and their adoption.
