Why AI-assisted PRs merge at half the rate of human code | LinearB’s 2026 Benchmarks

About this episode

This episode discusses how AI-assisted pull requests merge at a lower rate than human-authored code, based on findings from LinearB's 2026 Engineering Benchmarks Report.

Over 88% of developers use AI regularly, but AI-assisted pull requests merge at less than half the rate of human-authored code. In this episode, Dan Lines and Ben Lloyd Pearson break down the findings from LinearB's 2026 Engineering Benchmarks Report to reveal how AI is fundamentally reshaping software delivery. They explore the stark behavioral differences between unassisted, AI-assisted, and fully agentic pull requests, highlighting how AI accelerates code generation but exposes massive bot...

People in this episode

Host: Dan Lines

Guest: Ben Lloyd Pearson

Topics covered

• AI-assisted code
• pull requests
• software delivery
• developer behavior
• engineering benchmarks

Keywords

• AI
• pull requests
• software engineering
• code generation
• developer tools

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: LinearB

Books & works: 2026 Engineering Benchmarks Report

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