This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Hes right. I lurk places that arent anti AI and apparently its gotten insanely good this year and insanely cheap. I have no idea how any one is going to make money off this race to the bottom.
And we just had a post about how Linux has avoided enshitification.
Small changes driven by AI right now are hopefully being reviewed and controlled by experienced and knowledgeable senior developers, for now. Let's see how long that will last before they stop understanding what's going on in the kernel.
Everyone dooming here, but he literally just said that AIs are finding lots of glitches in old code, and that for that reason updates are getting bigger. Linus is NOT vibe coding linux.
And recently ground breaking privillege escalation glitches were found and fixed because of a LLM.
Of course we dont want shitty code from LLMs, but if they find important glitches and vulnerabilities, we obviously need to use them.
Fixed: replaced mistyped Ws with Es
I'm not against AI in general. I'm just against using it stupidly. And against using it as a vehicle for further monopolisation and centralisation of power. I'm against the "use more AI" slogan too many companies push.
But use it for specific purposes under human control that improve quality, then I'm all for it.
Especially if it comes to security. Hate AI like nothing else but you can't deny the truth.
Linux is open source with all its code public with probably a docent of AI Agents constantly trying out different attack vectors, they will eventually find a vulnerability. It also does feel like there are more critical CVEs in recent times. (there is https://app.opencve.io/statistics but i feel like its too simple and context matters alot here but still).
I think its okey and actually a good thing if the kernel maintainers would have some AI helping them out with that sort of thing if we get a more secure kernel in return.
Exactly.
What is the powerful new tools can be used for great good as well as great evil
Nuance is a learned skill when it comes to sensitive/trending topic discourse.
For anyone reading this, please learn more about topics you have a gut reaction to so you can better explain the pros and cons. You will be able to hold your own against people who know more about the topic, but refuse to acknowledge the cons, if you do.
Does this mean kernels will be less stable? Big changes all at once seem to imply that, generally.
most of the changes are caused by security vulnerabilities being discovered and fixed and potential crashes being discovered and fixed.
Every Linus AI headline for the last year: "AI is the future, adapt or die, if you hate AI leave Linux."
Every actual Linus quotation from those articles: "AI can be a powerful tool in the hands of experienced human programmers that are still responsible for every line of code they push."
AI isn't perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time.
- Linus Torvalds
Ya, I was a terrible developer before, now I'm still terrible but faster. LOL
just think about how much more damage you can do with a gun vs your fist
ai is an icbm
These are the most dangerous developers..
I will never use AI unless I am paid to like I currently am. I am not a worse developer for it. I have been learning software engineering continuously my entire life. I am completely self taught for over a decade professionally and longer than that in my free time. I have no university degree. I grew up in poverty in nowheresville Kentucky.
I don't need an LLM to learn or succeed. LLMs literally need people like me. I am sad Linus cant see it that way, but never meet your heroes so they say. l
because people with an agenda are seeing:
then try to combine those while leaving out the specific details so people come to their own conclusions based on emotional reaction in the hopes that linux users will turn away from linux or even change their views on ai the same way maga fucks change their views on epstein
or maybe its just an every day well intentioned headline like everything else
Using LLMs to analyze code for problems makes a lot of sense. It is just an extension of the rule based analysis we already do. It is very much a better hammer rather than a replacement of labour/thinking/taste. The programming languages we use are often difficult for humans to reason about reliably and hide a lot of errors. Our programming languages still suck (yes even Rust). If one day clang of gcc ships with a local LLM to lint code for security problems I would probably run it occasionally even on my hobby code despite being an AI hater.
If people are identifying errors using LLMs and fixing them by hand I am fine with that. It seems like a good use of the technology. If they start vibe coding drivers I want it declared so I can disable them or move to BSD.
If one day clang of gcc ships with a local LLM to lint code for security problems I would probably run it occasionally even on my hobby code despite being an AI hater.
Compilers already have deterministic linters built in, devs often turn them off anyway.
Quite a lot of the bugs being found in existing codebases show up as soon as you re-enable them.
Agreed, this is one way that LLMs can increase the quality of code.
Everyone is like "damn AI is making kernel be too big!!111" while Linus is like "Tons of genuine fixes and improvements found/made with AI lead to a lot of commits being the norm. Lots of review work, but definitely worth it."
CAN I NOT HAVE FUCKING ANYTHING THAT HASNT BEEN TAINTED BY AI!?!
But this is a best case scenario: bugs accumulated over the years are being spotted automatically and reviewed by experienced devs. It was normal to have a few updates that are very large due to all the accumulated cruft.
The bigger deal that will be an issue going forward is the bogus bug reports, not the good ones. The legit reports will dwindle eventually, bullshit reports will keep coming.
Going outside and yelling at the clouds. For now.
Depends on the cloud.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
(terms and conditions apply)
Meanwhile I'm asking ai to code review a snippet of code for a regex and it keeps saying it's wrong every time I paste the previous answer in a new chat.
I asked it to generate a SQL query with a bit of python, as the database schema is huge and unknown to me, obviously I checked it for glaring errors etc. I went back and clarified a couple of basic points. It then told me what I was doing was completely wrong, generated new code that worked is a different way, with a different edge case missed.
It's literally stack overflow but arguing with itself
That's how you're writing a regex validator that's almost always correct!
def is_regex_valid(p: Pattern | str, purpose_description: str):
return False
Hyping up AI doesn’t become nice when Linus does it.
He can be a legendary developer, a better one than I’ll probably ever become, but I just don’t see how one can separate the use and the ethical implications of this. AI companies want to replace workers, period. There’s no plan to “increase productivity” and still employ this many people. The plan is to increase profits for shareholders.
AI helping Linus to develop better doesn’t make this reality go away. It’s akin to saying we should be thankful to nazi scientists.
You should read the original article, or even his mail on LKML, because that is not what he is saying. He is not endorsing AI in any way; instead, he is concerned that the latest linux release candidate has so much changes, because everyone and their mother is using some AI tool to create and send "little small" fixes; obviously he has no control over how volunteers work.
Furthermore, he stated that the security mailing list has become unusable due to the influx of AI generated entries.
I am not sure anything about that is good.
I am not sure anything about that is good.
I mean it's good and bad, basically AI is finding a bunch of serious zero days... which is causing a lot of updates to need to be happening now, and that is kind of open source philosophy of security by obscurity isn't the goal.
AI is finding a bunch of serious zero days
According to Torvals/TFA:
most of this is just lots of tiny fixes. It's pretty much spread all over - drivers (gpu, sound, networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code
All the sloppers are torn about this, but Torvalds has undeniable mastery at this, so it's great to see AI being used as a beneficial tool. If there's a single person who should have unlimited access to the most powerful AI models, it should be Linus Torvalds.
I am just really happy that he is still around to actually oversee the mixing between such an important part of computing infrastructure and the new radical tool of AI. Had it been 10 years later and we probably would have uber slop linux
To be perfectly clear, the only AI I am subscribed to is the one Proton gives with their family plan VPN bundle, and I didn't choose it. I used it to edit a letter I wrote once and otherwise trust it as far as I can throw its server.
This knee-jerk reaction to anything with the letters AI attached being bad is just so silly. Y'all are acting the way Republicans act when it comes to the word "queer." Just because it's in the vicinity of you doesn't mean you're contaminated, you've caught it, you're now one of them.
This is a highly intelligent individual - controversial hot takes notwithstanding - utilizing a tool in a way that has proven itself to be very effective when used properly. Nobody is saying you have to get ready to be a switch in the bedroom any more than they're saying you have to use AI.
Distro maintenance is a difficult and thankless task, and having a tool that can scan and analyze code orders of magnitude faster than you as well as make suggestions on how to fix it isn't an inherently bad thing. Setting that tool loose with unlimited agency would be a bad thing, but where oh where is Linus saying he's gonna give Claude full read/write access to the entire kernel and walk away forevermore?
Hate on AI bros all you want. I'm with you there, most of them are idiots that don't know their mouth from their anus and speak from both equally. I don't think Linus fits that particular picture [hot takes notwithstanding!] when it comes to using the new tool on the market in a reasonable and measured way.
Slopux? LLLinux?
Doesn't ring as well as Microslop, but we'll get there.