This is a bad idea. Now we don’t know who actually wrote the code, and therefore who owns (or doesn’t own) the copyrights. This is really, exceptionally stupid.
The mailing list change the article is referring to: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20261009083137.3-1-sashal@kernel.org/
I wonder if the original rule was too broad and it was leading to noise? I’d prefer to have attribution when code is written, but not in all cases
If someone uses an LLM to brainstorm or track down a bug, then confirms it and writes the fix by hand, adding attribution might end up being noise.
Meanwhile if someone uses the LLM to write the fix, then that should get attribution
Linus said it wasn’t working because “almost no one was using it”. Everyone was just lying because they were ashamed to admit they were using AI.
Given Torvalds’ attitude towards AI, it’s not surprising.
“They’ve gotten good enough to find bugs because LLMs, AI, are just pattern matchers and code is nothing but patterns in a specific format.”
True, but let’s not forget that
2 + 2 = 4can be achieved through a million different patterns[1], so just because AI can find a working pattern doesn’t make it goodLinus comparing AI to text editors and fucking compilers shows how high on his own farts he is. Given the same input, a compiler will always produce the same output, down to the last bit. The same cannot be said about AI - throw the same version of claude code with the same prompt on the same computer file and it will produce different results, maybe with a “similar enough” end result, but not identical.
AI is not a tool, it’s a million monkeys with keyboards that cannot be held accountable for their output.
(((((64 / 2) / 2) / 2) / 2) / 2) + (((((64 / 2) / 2) / 2) / 2) / 2)is a valid pattern for 2 + 2, for instance ↩︎
just because AI can find a working pattern doesn’t make it good
I have seen so much from AI supporters saying “it can be a good tool” to save time, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone try to make the claim that it’s a tool that leads to better code. That should be very telling.
I hate to be that guy but there are compilers with non-deterministic optimization strategies and they do tend to be the most performant. They’re just generally disallowed in major project distributions because the maintainers want the artifact to be verifiable by and end user for security reasons.
Huh, TIL. Off the rabbit hole of compiler (non)determinism I go
That quote was someone else
“LLMs are good enough now,” said Greg Kroah-Hartman, a veteran Linux kernel maintainer, at the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Summit in South Korea in August. “They’ve gotten good enough to find bugs because LLMs, AI, are just pattern matchers and code is nothing but patterns in a specific format.”
Also to be fair, that quote is about finding bugs and the guy might not have been talking about using AI to patch them. The article makes it sound that way, but the article also seems overly confident and pro-AI about some other things too.
You can deterministically find something that is clearly defined, but bugs don’t fall into that category
I know, but even regarding bug catching, there have been a LOT of bogus bug reports “discovered by AI” that could not be replicated in any way, shape or form. Granted, I’ve seen one or two articles saying that AI helped find real software bugs, but what’s the ratio there, 1:500 for useful/useless AI bug reports?
Granted, I’ve seen one or two articles saying that AI helped find real software bugs, but what’s the ratio there, 1:500 for useful/useless AI bug reports?
It’s worth distinguishing between LLM generated bug-reports submitted by randos, and developers themselves using LLMs to look for bugs in their software.
My own experience, with my own code-bases, is that the LLM I use is extremely good at finding real flaws in my code. It’ll also nitpick a lot, but it has has become better at triaging issues than it used to be, so that kind of thing is easy to ignore.
Because of that, having an LLM take a look at my code before I push it has become another QC step, along with running tests, linters, and formatters. The end result is higher quality software
Given the same input, a compiler will always produce the same output, down to the last bit. The same cannot be said about AI
LLM’s have something like a temperature setting that is producing the intentional randomness, so that you prompting it is not going around in circles all the time. (if you are running an army of agents this is actually important for usefulness)
Anyway this is not an inherent LLM thing, it can be turned off.
Fame does something to people, either that or he’s burnt out and this is a midlife crisis. I love unix based operating systems, but sometimes I feel Linux was the wrong thing to get popular unfortunately. It abandons so much of the core philosophy.
I can’t see how this can go wrong.
Unpopular opinion: it shouldn’t matter when it comes to code quality.
If it’s a dev with AI and the code is good, then it should be merged.
If it’s a dev with AI and the code is bad, then the code should be rejected.
If it’s a dev without AI and the code is good, then it should be merged.
If it’s a dev without AI and the code is bad, then the code should be rejected.
So in that case AI has no effect on the outcome. The only explanation I can see for making it visible is for the sake of licensing. Which I don’t have an opinion on right now because I haven’t looked into it enough.
People using AI push a lot more code in a shorter amount of time. That deluge makes it much more likely for bad code, intentional or not, to slip by.
“Just leave it to a few trusted devs”
Some bad actors can play the long game. The XZ Utils backdoor is a very recent example of a contributor trying to abuse a backdoor he put there himself, after 2 years of posing as a helpful person.
“Let AI review it”
If humans are prone to mistakes, why would anyone leave a probabilistic program that is known to make bad decisions at random and that has, on more than one occasion, “cheated” to pass quality tests, deleted files it shouldn’t and is still suceptible to prompt attacks, review it?
I understand the sentiment of “if the AI generated code is good, allow it”, but the “productivity” gains in writing code means that, sooner or later, the person using the AI will care less and less about reading and preemptively catching possible errors because there’ll be so many alterations that he either has to spend a month reading, or just skim over and accept.
let them. Seriously, let them do it.
And when the day comes, and it will, when something is submitted and approved and breaks shit then people can turn to the devs and Linus and say “I told you so.”
my decision a few months ago to start daily driving BSD doesn’t seem to be a bad one.
FreeBSD and OpenBSD both allow AI and contain AI-generated code. NetBSD requires prior approval but doesn’t outright ban it.
OpenBSD doesn’t allow it, what are you on about?
https://lwn.net/Articles/1064541/
Thomas de Grivel made clear the chances of accepting code with such a murky copyright situation were effectively nil, and he said on March 23 that he would remove all the LLM-generated code and keep only what he wrote himself.
open-slopware calls OpenBSD having a “Permissive AI Policy” and links to this commit as evidence.
when something is submitted and approved and breaks shit
Not to defend AI, but this already happens in the kernel, often. It has been this way since long before LLMs were around.
then people can turn to the devs and Linus and say “I told you so.”
I bet his response will be an email with a dozen variations of “fuck you for insinuating that I have any responsibility, I didn’t approve that specific commit, it’s all <approver>'s fault who is a fucking imbecile”
Linus and say “I told you so.”
Linus fully approves this. What imagination land do you live in?
Because they’re all using it.
AAAARGH!!! I JUST FINISHED HARDENING MY MAIN LINUX BOX! I LIKE BSD BUT DID I JUST PUT ALL THAT EFFORT IN FOR NOTHING‽‽‽
BSDs allow AI too
OpenBSD only has a handful of slop commits, NetBSD only had one and apparenty has since removed the code, and both MirBSD and HyperbolaBSD are firmly anti-AI (though not ready for release yet).
Besides, this new policy of not having to declare AI-generated code doesn’t apply to BSD.
3·2 days ago@heliotrope @cm0002 Securing a system is always good practice and the effort was well spent because you (ostensibly) learned something.
Unrelated question, how do I pin the version of my kernel?
Most package managers have a package hold option. (not that it wouldn’t be extremely dumb to do this on an Internet connected machine)
