“hi I’m Linus. I’m 23, and I like computers.”
Wtf is with using old pictures of tech guys.
Linus Torvalds to critics of AI coding in Linux: "Fork it. Or just walk away."
Submitted 3 weeks ago by 
leo@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show to news@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show
Comments
IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
natecox@programming.dev 2 weeks ago Glorious leader does not age. His youth and virility are timeless.
cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
It’s a perfectly reasonable position: fork the kernel with a purist no-ai approach and see where it’s going. It’s literally what open-source is about. No need for a screaming contest, just do the thing you are convinced of and compete for the best solution.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
+1
Proof is in the puddin’.
If people think this will poison the kernel, well, see if it happens. If it does, fork it from an earlier point.
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Arent the issues with ai in the linux kernel ethical, not about code quality?
socsa@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Realistically, this is as much about not wanting to police constant AI drama as it is about AI coding utility. Like it or not that cat is out of the bag, but as long as you enforce the same development guidelines in terms of code quality, PR rules and such, the impact should be small. Arguably the bigger issue would come with taking a hardline approach where you inevitably spend a bunch of time arguing over AI accusations. We are already quickly approaching a point where it feels half the Internet is AI, and the other half is arguing about whether something is or isn’t AI. That’s just not going to work for FOSS development.
iocase@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m arguing that it’s not a small difference since the cognitive burden is put on maintainers who are already overworked. Now they need to edit through AI PR manure to find decent requests. A lot of OSS projects have stopped taking public PRs for this reason. It shifts the cognitive burden from the programmer to make good code, onto the reviewer to read and understand AI slop contribution.
socsa@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Yeah I think those workflows will adapt eventually, with more maintainers and some kind of more formal trust or reputation process to help sort things. It sucks but figuring out how to deal with it is really the only path forward. Otherwise all the cognitive load goes to arguing about AI.
I also think the worst offenders will get bored once the novelty wears off, and if the standards are kept high enough that getting a PR through still requires some amount of human work.
Jako302@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Straight up banning ai won’t solve this issue either. People will just commit code either way and simply won’t tell you they used ai.
cerement@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago “Year of the BSD desktop.” ?
Telemachus93@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I have found no indication that FreeBSD won’t accept LLM-assisted contributions… On their wiki there is a small section about rules for a summer of code event, where they forbid it being used for coding, but just because that event is intended to be about learning… That doesn’t sound like a clear “no” to all LLM contributions.
raspberry_confetti@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago Yup
MolochHorridus@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Money has spoken. Tech giants are main source of funding for Linux project. Torvalds won’t bite the hand that feeds him.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Programmers are hilariously dumb for how smart they are, the whole concept of AI “being the future” is a perfect example of it.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
What about the third option? Stay, but don’t pay to use an “AI” service.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Theres a forming deeply uninformed / misinformed loud group of people who desperately want to hate on AI being used for anything, even in scenarios where its actually perfectly good at its job.
Even when extremely seasoned professionals with waaaay more experience are stating “its a perfectly fine tool” these folks somehow cannot wrap their head around the possibility someone like fucking Linus Torvalds might know better than them.
Imagine having the utter balls to assert you know better than Torvalds about whether a technology is good or not 😐
Meanwhile those of us actually in the field have known for over a year now that the tools are pretty good now and very useful.
“the only conceivable reason anyone could object is that they’re ignorant” is cultish logic. Adding “my hero likes it so it can’t be bad” does not help.
Some of us have been “in the field” for decades and don’t like these tools for many reasons, including “the output is unacceptable bad” and “the tools are built in unethical and morally deficient ways”.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Anyone with this view instantly goes in the “doesnt know wtf they are talking about, skill issue” bin.
For coding, not really tbh. People are also deeply misinformed on this as well.
People are still operating on assumptions of how these tools work like its 2023 and not 2026.
The luddites haven’t been keeping up with the modern standards and probably couldnt even describe the nuance of when to choose a tool vs a skill for an optimization… let alone can speak as to what tools or skills to be using.
If you dont have opinions on how you’ve found stuff like caveman and headroom to work for you, I just straight up dont consider your opinion to be up to date enough to matter.
A big part of my job now is interacting with companies who have only just started to dip their toes into using these tools and so many developers are getting the sudden realization that keeping their head buried in the sand for the past 3 years has ruined their resume.
The difference between devs that at least tried to stay on top of things vs the luddites is palpable.
And on the total other end of the section you have fake devs cosplaying as real ones vis AI-everything but have 0 clue how to actually code.
Only the senior devs who both know how to code and how to use AI efficiently are aggressively outpacing everyone else.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not just Linus though. This is the exact position of many devs all over the world, ones who are still doing a good job and have clearly not fallen into AI psychosis.
nagoya@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
The fact that some people don’t want to see AI being used to generate code does not make them dumb or misinformed. They may be informed, and simply reached a different conclusion than you.
Also, you have to consider that some of the most popular tools are controlled by a select few and that concentration can be used to control markets and users, reinforce biases, and shape what gets encouraged.
Finally, the use of AI can easily feed into a maximalist view of “produce more and faster” that has direct consequences like layoffs, increased cost of hardware, increased resource usage, increased environmental impact.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The majority of naysayers are touting deeply misinformed falsifities.
Its not a matter of guessing their intent, theyre quite outspoken on why they think its bad.
And the majority of them tout talking points that are years out of date at best.
Some valid points get brought up, but most of the points tend to be in the “these armchair devs have zero goddamn clue about how things actually are, they just are bandwagoning into an angry mob”
MolochHorridus@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
All major operating systems and software has been around before AI. Sure, AI might have some uses, even good ones but not enough to warrant all the negative effects it and all those datacenters running the models have.
Some people just don’t care about the negative effects and Torvalds is obviously one of them.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
I hate AI as in, I hate Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, etc. for pushing it everywhere, being an oligopoly, and using it for mass surveillance. But AI as a tool is fantastic for some tasks
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Every single generative tool is built on theft. No one has a training database that only contains code they were given legal permission to use for that purpose. Moreover, if these tools were trained on any GNU GPL code, then the tool and all of its output should also be GNU GPL:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License
None of the companies developing these tools are obeying the terms of the licenses. The trained models are the product of theft.
You cannot be a moral person and approve of the use of these tools, they are diametrically opposed.
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Hard disagree.
This is like saying anyone who has watched a Disney movie now owes Disney a check any time they illustrate anything, even entirely unrelated, because they’ve learned from their commercial products in the past. If they don’t pay Disney, then their creations are based on theft.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Given that you’ve presumably looked at open source code in the past, and got more proficient (however marginally) as a result, does all your future code now belong to the GPL?
Arcka@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Copying is not theft.
Mac@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Linus isn’t gonna let you hit little bro
Fuck AI
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What a super useful addition to the convo.
Maybe think a little bit harder before hitting the reply button in the future, troll.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To be fair, many have had their workplace enshittified by AI, or managers with AI psychosis.
Or fired over it.
…I think it’s understandable for people to be pissed, and take an absolutionist position, as the leads who see it as a tool seem to be few and far between.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Blaming AI for this, instead of the shitty people who made the decisions, is still very dumb.
I agree that aforementioned companies/managers/etc are shitty.
Thats not AIs fault lol, and isn’t a reflection of it.
Blaming AI as tge issue is just kneejerk mob mentality.
finwe26@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Social media is a much bigger and dangerous threat to mankind than AI will ever be.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
This is an extremely dangerous misconception.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
+1
Especially in regards to the nonsense that transformers LLMs will somehow lead to AGI. That is complete nonsense. The bubble is going to pop, and it’ll become a cheap utility.
Meanwhile, algorithmic optimization is basically the root of many world problems.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’d say they’re in the same tier. It will take time to determine which is worse.
caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Have you forgotten about Bitkeeper?
Epp@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Bravo! 💯
Hairyfishnuts@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
SirHaxalot@nord.pub 2 weeks ago
Nobody really argues about that here though. The context of Linus statement is whether or not experienced kernel developers should be forbidden from using AI tools or not.
pixxelkick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You may be surprised to learn that the maintainers of linux are not “untrained monkeys”