That's really sad actually, i didn't think of that.

I only recently installed Linux for the first time on my HTPC last year and it was flawless at first. Last couple months I've noticed a handful of bugs and system hangs that never happened before. Anecdotal, I know, but it worries me as a novice. I built my home server on this machine specifically to avoid microslop...

Open source is all about moving fast. Much, much more innovations happen in the oss space than in proprietary land.

Linux is a serious project.

As such, it has serious quality control.

Torvals already allowed AI-helped commits. And Linux didn't break over it.

Bad pull requests rutinely get thrown out. And unfortunately for thode categorically against AI as a thing that exists, AI use doesn't automatically make every PR bad. In the right hands it's a great tool with a lot of potential.

And if Torvalds feels Linux is a project too big to be brought down by an onslaught of bad PRs made by wannabe script kiddies, so be it.

If that does become a crippling problem, the policy can be undone as easily as it was made. If not, competent contributors are free to use AI responsibly as a tool and not a magic wand.

A hard "no AI anywhere in any way, shape or form" stance is like the ostrich digging its head into the ground. Not trying a softer approach beforehand which allows responsible use (may also mean using approved environmentally friendly setups and open-weight models) is a bad idea for everyone involved.

Technology moves forward and we as individuals can choose to move with it or not. That being said, the foss moral imperative is: democratize any tech you can. This is especially true of when it's a dangerous technology, which LLM-powered chatbots are.

If you instead move fast to burrow your head like an ostrich and deny the reality of the predator growing right beside you, the little lion cub that play hunted you just a while ago may very well soon grow into the lion that will devour you whole.

Praise him^*^.

^*^Terry A. Davis

Been a bit of a bother trying to find the actual info and not a rage piece that makes FOX News look sane. And I don't touch that agency with an 11ft pole.

From what I remember reading, Linus uses LLMs to help during bug hunting - the second pair of eyes. This is actually a useful part of the AI models - they may be awful at code writing, but they do seem to have some capability when looking over code as a first line proofer. That is, it's useful for you to get a direction as to where to look further with issues.

As for the Assisted-By tag being removed, it was a matter that no one was really using it, making it functionally useless.

I know I do, but I started with perl

Throwing rocks from a glass house I see ;)

He could get his head around python if he wanted to, that statement is laughable.

because he didn’t know enough Python. The programming language kids learn in high school. The guy who runs the kernel couldn’t get his head around Python.

This is such an ignorant thing to say. Python syntax is indeed simple and is taught in high schools, but neither means learning to program in Python is easy or doesn't take a lot of time.

Sure. But that's like an English literature scholar deciding they want to write a pamphlet, but in French, despite knowing very little French -- so instead of learning French, or just writing the pamphlet in English, or asking someone who knows French to translate...they use AI to write the thing. That's really stupid.

He's just allocating his time and energy toward kernel development

Then he should have stuck to his lane.

Delinus Linux?

This exactly! I don't understand how one would let an LLM touch their passion projects. I don't mind someone quickly slopping together a little python script for something, but I would never let it touch my babies. It'd be like buying a self-assembling lego set. Sure the end result is the same, but is the end result why someone buys a lego set?

You either die a hero...

Even if you train your own model, its still worse than a human doing human work every single time and runs huge risks to a project like this.

I've already noticed this having installed Linux for the first time last year. Could be unrelated to the kernel but I've had more system hangs the last couple months, up from basically zero prior to that.

he'd think his AI code is god.

Give it time.

Thanks, I thought I was in a minority thinking he is losing his marbles, but the upvotes you got say there's more people realizing that.

Even worse is, that he's inadequately helping capital, including Microsoft, in stripping the common man of their own computing, to rent it back to them.

That is one of many issues.

Put a pin in socio-economic-environmental issues for a second.

AI is good at finding bugs/vulnerabilities. If you're using it for peer programming, the output is 100% what you're comfortable with, while you're still directing what goes where and how. That's right up Torvald's alley. Not every piece of code we write is a masterpiece of complicated art. Sometimes, when we are writing a complicated piece, we are unable to see all the ramifications of each piece in a way that AI appears to be able to see.

From this standpoint, even if we had a LOT more people working on the kernel. We'd amplify problems, especially if the people we threw on the project were more free-hands than artists.

Unpin that socio-economic-env stuff now.

Until tokens cost enough that it's not reasonable, or the AI providers make things dumb enough to save money/meet law/eco demands, most code at most places will likely go through at least a post-cleanup/analysis phase. Everything would be labeled slop.

I don't think, long term, that we're going to have AI writing everything at the level we are even now, but it's not impossible. That's not to say I advocate it or push it forward, but there may simply be no way to stop it if the economics / laws allow it to continue.

It's like half the thread belongs in one of the power_tripping_bastard/mod_abuse communities

"When did my political project become so political?"
- Person who doesn't realize that literally everything is political

How long until he monetizes it in the biggest bait and switch attempt FOSS has ever seen?

Fuck I don't want to see that 😭

I wouldn't worry about that.

How much AI slop do you think is in Windows by this point? If I'm forced to choose an OS when they ALL contain AI written code, I'll choose the open source one.

We're now thinking of switching to BSD. But I'm hoping enough kernel maintainers and others will move to a fork of the last pre-LLM-touched kernel(s) ASAP.

Linux still has the advantage of not coming packed with trackers and spy software. But who knows what the future holds? maybe the ai agents will sneak in some backdoors purposefully.