一句话:实证发现AI团队性别多样性提升仓库流行度与代码质量,女性贡献者代码质量更高。
AI 系统需要高质量、可持续代码以保障可靠性并降低偏见与技术债风险,但女性在软件工程中代表性不足,可能造成开发视角同质化。已有研究证明多样性对一般软件团队有益,其对 AI 系统代码质量的具体影响尚不明确。本文开展实证研究,比较 AI 项目中多样化与非多样化仓库,分析团队多样性与项目流行度、整体代码质量及个人贡献的关系。结果显示:多样化仓库在流行度和社区参与度上显著更高,整体代码质量也优于非多样化仓库;女性贡献者虽在总代码中占比更小,但其贡献质量持续高于男性贡献者。研究强调应消除女性参与 AI 开发的障碍,以多样性提升 AI 系统质量。
The rapid advancement of AI systems necessitates high-quality, sustainable code to ensure reliability and mitigate risks such as bias and technical debt. However, the underrepresentation of women in software engineering raises concerns about homogeneity in AI development. Studying gender diversity in AI systems is crucial, as diverse perspectives are essential for improving system robustness, reducing bias, and enhancing overall code quality. While prior research has demonstrated the benefits of diversity in general software teams, its specific impact on the code quality of AI systems remains unexplored. This study addresses this gap by examining how gender diversity within AI teams influences project popularity, code quality, and individual contributions. Our study makes three key contributions. First, we analyzed the relationship between team diversity and repository popularity, revealing that diverse AI repositories not only differ significantly from non-diverse ones but also achieve higher popularity and greater community engagement. Second, we explored the effect of diversity on the overall code quality of AI systems and found that diverse repositories tend to have superior code quality compared to non-diverse ones. Finally, our analysis of individual contributions revealed that although female contributors contribute to a smaller proportion of the total code, their contributions demonstrate consistently higher quality than those of their male counterparts. These findings highlight the need to remove barriers to female participation in AI development, as greater diversity can improve the overall quality of AI systems.