How AI Changes the Role of Applied Scientists

This post quantifies the impact of AI tools (Ava, Cursor agents, Claude) on the productivity and task distribution of Instacart's Economics Team. It shows a doubling of PRs and LoC, a 33% increase in unique task categories per member, and a shift away from core ML/data pipeline tasks towards Platform/Tooling and Frontend/UI development. The analysis uses LLM-classified GitHub PRs from 2023-2025 to demonstrate how AI raises minimum viable competence, enabling applied scientists to tackle new task types and reduce inter-team coordination costs.