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Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.2 changed developer habits across 500 teams. The research found a 44% increase in AI usage, suggesting that better models drive higher demand for AI rather than reducing total work hours.The data reveals a complexity shift where low-complexity tasks grew by 22% while high-complexity work surged by 68%. This transition isn't instant; developers typically experience a four-to-six-week lag while they learn a model's limits before moving beyond simple code generation to more ambitious, cross-system engineering challenges.
The developer's role is shifting from writing code to managing it. The fastest-growing task categories are documentation (+62%), architecture (+52%), and code review (+51%). You should expect your team's output to shift toward these high-level oversight tasks as AI-generated codebases grow larger and more complex.
We partnered with University of Chicago economist @SuproteemSarkar to study how more capable models have changed the way people use Cursor. Across 500 teams, we find that developers are tackling more ambitious work with AI, with a 68% increase in high-complexity tasks this year. https://t.co/TLnU85xaUo
