The Unintended Consequences of Censoring Digital Technology -- Evidence from Italy's ChatGPT Ban
This provides empirical evidence on the short-term productivity costs of AI tool bans for developers and policymakers.
The study examined how Italy's ChatGPT ban affected productivity, finding that Italian developers' coding output dropped by about 50% in the first two business days post-ban, though it later recovered, and the ban increased use of censorship bypass tools like Tor.
We analyse the effects of the ban of ChatGPT, a generative pre-trained transformer chatbot, on individual productivity. We first compile data on the hourly coding output of over 8,000 professional GitHub users in Italy and other European countries to analyse the impact of the ban on individual productivity. Combining the high-frequency data with the sudden announcement of the ban in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the output of Italian developers decreased by around 50% in the first two business days after the ban and recovered after that. Applying a synthetic control approach to daily Google search and Tor usage data shows that the ban led to a significant increase in the use of censorship bypassing tools. Our findings show that users swiftly implement strategies to bypass Internet restrictions but this adaptation activity creates short-term disruptions and hampers productivity.