ai and ml<\/p>\n
Linux supremo says contributors opposed to AI use can ‘just walk away’<\/p>\n
Chief penguinista Linus Torvalds has declared that Linux is not an “anti-AI” project, telling contributors who object they can either walk away or fork the kernel.<\/p>\n
On lore.kernel.org<\/a>, the archive for Linux kernel mailing lists, reformed potty mouth Linus<\/a> was responding to a discussion about some negative sentiments toward AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is one area where Torvalds said he was willing to \u201cabsolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer \u2026 Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that they can do the open-source thing and fork it.”<\/p>\n \u201cOr just walk away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Ever the pragmatist, Torvalds described AI as a tool, \u201cjust like other tools we use. And it\u2019s clearly a useful one. It may not have been that \u2018clearly\u2019 even just a year ago, but it\u2019s no longer in question today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody who doubts that clearly hasn\u2019t actually used it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In October 2024, the Linux kingpin branded 90 percent of AI as marketing hype<\/a>, saying he hated the hoopla generated by the tech industry. He said at the time: \u201cI really don\u2019t want to go there, so my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He predicted things would change in five years, though he has softened his stance in 21 months.<\/p>\n AI can be a \u201csomewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from an \u2018it keeps finding embarrassing bugs\u2019 standpoint,\u201d Torvalds conceded this week. \u201cBut the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing \u2018La La La, I can\u2019t hear you\u2019 at the top of your voice like some people seem to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The solution, he said, is to make sure LLM tools help maintainers rather than cause them pain. \u201cWe\u2019re not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The kernel project continues to be about technology, Torvalds added, and while the social angle of developing open source software is an important aspect, it is a \u201cside benefit, not the point of the project.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn the kernel community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of religious reasons. And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The seeming shift in stance was evident when The Register’s SJVN spoke to senior Linux maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman in March<\/a>: he told us AI-assisted bug reports and code review had improved dramatically.<\/p>\n “Something happened a month ago, and the world switched. Now we have real reports\u2026 All open source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they’re good, and they’re real.”<\/p>\n Torvalds in May said AI tools were only useful if they help \u201crather than cause unnecessary pain and pointless make-believe work<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Some maintainers in open source have complained of burnout<\/a> – not helped by\u00a0AI slop bug reports<\/a> – and others worry about the quality of vibe-coding<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Work still lies ahead before AI consistently proves it’s more help than hindrance.<\/p>\n \u201cAI isn\u2019t perfect,\u201d said Torvalds in the mailing-list post on Tuesday. \u201cBut Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI [sic] had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time. Because it\u2019s not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Quite right.\u00a0 \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ai and ml Linux supremo says contributors opposed to AI use can ‘just walk away’ Chief penguinista Linus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-765784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}