arXiv:2607.13679cs.AIcs.HC2026-07

AI机器人加入开源项目后,团队协作更稳定,冲突减少,产出更独特。

When Bots Join the Team: Bot Adoption and the Institutional Fabric of Open-Source Software Projects

  • 将机器人视为团队成员,分析其对协作机制的影响
  • 机器人上线后冲突减少37%,输出更具独特性
  • 适合关注AI与人类协同、组织演化的研究者

AI代理正融入人类团队,引发一个根本问题:当自动化代理成为常规成员时,群体组织是强化还是削弱?我们以开源软件项目为研究场景,观察2,991个GitHub项目在引入首个机器人前后两年的数据。机器人负责提交代码请求、评审代码和合并变更,留下完整的互动记录。我们将机器人视为参与者而非工具,衡量制度理论关联的三项持久协调能力——重复参与、社会记忆、角色分化——以及两个结果:冲突级联和产出独特性。结果显示,机器人采纳后,重复协作增加,特定机器人被更多提及,冲突级联下降37%,产出独特性显著提升。这些变化集中在采纳时间点附近,而非逐步积累。由于缺乏未处理对照组,结果仅能解释为精确的时间关联,非因果关系。两个模式难以用其他解释覆盖:能力对结果的影响符合其功能(协调或分化)而非提供方(人或机器);人类相关能力解释了机器人与冲突的关系,但无法解释机器人与产出独特性的关联。研究支持一种特定解释:可预测、规则驱动的代理可融入社区的社会基础设施中。机器人是契机,社会组织才是机制。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

AI agents are joining human teams, raising a basic question: when an automated agent becomes a regular participant, does group organization strengthen or weaken? We study this question in open-source software, where bots open pull requests, review code, and merge changes alongside people, leaving a public record of every interaction. Treating bots as participants rather than tools, we examine 2,991 GitHub projects for two years before and after each adopted its first bot. We measure three capabilities that institutional theory links to durable coordination - repeated engagement, social memory, and role differentiation - and two outcomes: conflict cascades and output distinctiveness. Bot adoption is followed by more repeated collaboration, greater recognition of specific bots in discussion, fewer conflict cascades, and more distinctive outputs. These changes cluster around adoption rather than accumulating gradually. Because we lack an untreated comparison group, we interpret the results as precisely timed associations, not causal effects. Two patterns are difficult for alternative explanations to account for: capabilities predict outcomes according to their function - coordination versus differentiation - rather than whether humans or bots provide them, and human-side capabilities account for the bot-conflict association but not the bot-distinctiveness association. The findings are consistent with a specific interpretation: predictable, rule-based agents can become part of a community's social infrastructure. The bot is the occasion; social organization is the mechanism.

AI协作开源生态组织演化机器人治理

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