“Improvement” huh
?
I too love
filling my code with things that silently reduce my understandingimproving my code usingstochastic prediction models trained on tainted data filled with hidden injection prompt attacksAIwhat’s the worst that could happen? /s
I can see people genuinely switching to NetBSD because of this.
I’d love to see a pre-AI fork of the Linux kernel.
I think some of the BSDs have no AI clauses.
Watching Torvalds actions tearing this place apart is hilarious
Why do you find joy in the suffering of others
Almost anyone can cut and paste a face on a different body using a classic photo editor.
It still takes a profesional to do it in a way that delivers a quality result.
Linus Torvalds is a professional, the linux terminal is his baby, if we can trust anyone on this, its him.
The amateurs using ai to produce slop that resembles what we perceive as quality, is sometimes hard to tell but 25 years ago people though half life 1 looked insanely realistic and that graphics could not possibly look any more real. Over time our brains will adapt and we will be able to tell slop from real work in a heartbeat. I bet most people here can already tell if a mail was written by an llm and not audited by a human with ease.
Linus explained in that Git tag message that he “did what I preach” and used modern LLM tools to make sense of patches that were hard for him to follow.
It’s already too late. He’s gone down the rabbit hole.
but isn’t using AI inherently unethical?
Yes, and the people doing mental gymnastics to defend it are unprincipled losers and/or cucks to the billionaires.
The models used to generate code were built by stealing from us. Fuck whatever stupid opinions you might have on copyright; you were exploited. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, etc are making money, corrupting our democracy, and destroying our way of life because they stole our work. They wouldn’t be able to do that without the massive theft of labor they’ve committed, or if our government actually enforced the laws that they broke, and are currently still breaking.
Why should these scumbags (or anyone) be able to steal and profit from our labor? Are we going to accept our assigned roles as mere cattle for the megacriminals? Will you be happy when your daughter is conscripted as a “breeder” for Elon Musk? Or when your son dies fighting in a war for resources so we can build more data centers?
Or how about when the subsidized tokens run out, you can’t afford to use the models you’ve become unable to function without, and are forced to go work in an Amazon warehouse or copper mine or some shit because you eagerly and enthusiastically contributed to the monopolization of your own labor, and were too stupid to realize it before it was too late?
takes a profesional
Considering that the word points to just about anyone who has been doing a thing for money for a while, I’d suggest you look for a better word.
I’m worried about cognitive surrender. There’s evidence of people losing skills they once had because they stopped doing it themselves and just get AI to do it for them.
“Using AI for Just 10 Minutes Erodes Your Ability to Persist at Hard Things”: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/using-ai-just-10-minutes-erodes-your-ability-persist-hard-things
They should run the test with calculators, because they’ll see the same effect. Turns out that giving people a tool to make things trivial, and then taking that tool away, halfway through the goddamn exam, is a lot more frustrating than just asking them to do some algebra on paper.
‘Bicycling for just ten miles makes walking back seem like a pain in the ass.’
going to just copy and paste my reply to your other comment: AI is not a tool it is a replacement, there’s no skill in using AI
If you give up all critical thinking to the LLM, than it is indeed a replacement, but there are lots of ways you can use AI without giving up all your critical thinking.
And it always takes skill to be able to evaluate the results of an LLM.
so you didn’t look at the study, ok
Only in the sense using a calculator makes you worse at long division. You’re still doing math.
Every pearl-clutching article like ‘doctors got worse at spotting cancer when we gave them a tool and then took it away’ is only measuring before and after. None of them seem interested in asking: how much more cancer did they find, with the tool?
AI is not a tool it is a replacement, there’s no skill in using AI
Meh, its less exciting whenever Claude Code is involved; I am wondering how many undetected bugs will sneak into the kernel. If he was going to use an LLM, he could at least use something local and not connected to one of the many nasty big corps that are ruining shit.
You wouldn’t want him using a local model unless he was running some fancy rig that could run a high end frontier model. He might not have such a thing laying around. Using the best out there for something like this is how you help avoid bugs.
Honestly, his mind and the community is probably one of the best things out there at the moment. They live the Linux Kernel, while that thing he used does not think or understand anything. Eh, it would be better if they moved with care instead, as that is a good way to avoid bugs too. I don’t have a lot of faith in gassed up LLMs.
I am wondering how many undetected bugs will sneak into the kernel.
Less with LLMs than without. https://projectdiscovery.io/blog/the-vulnerability-curve-bent-with-the-ai-curve https://www.darpa.mil/news/2025/aixcc-results
Yeah, but you are still relying on models that are going to go up in smoke when the bubble fucking crashes. As people are rightfully hesitant to pay the real price for these things, these things are controlled by mega-corps which is ultimately a bad thing because a centralized authority sets the terms of engagement with their services. They are the ones actively scraping open source projects so much that it acts as a DDoS attack, hovering up personal data of other people as if it were candy. Not to mention the other effects it is having on jobs, AI systems being central to massive data breaches, etc. A few positives don’t outweigh the massive negatives that come with the technology.
If the models all go up in smoke, we still have the code (and its bugs) - so let’s get as many bugs out as possible as soon as possible and not accept a bunch of garbage code - as has always been the case, it’s just happening faster now.
Trainers (all over the world) are behaving badly, because they can get away with it. I’m not sure where that ends up, but it doesn’t change the generated code or the discovered vulnerabilities or the fixes.
The personal data has been abused for decades already, but again - now it’s easier for more actors to abuse your personal data and mine. Maybe, someday, we’ll get serious about enforcing privacy policies and not just have completely toothless theater about it.
Yeah, personal data has in fact been abused for years, it’s just getting worse though…With all the latest breaches that have leaked a lot of shit. It’s why I am constantly fighting all the bad bills whenever they are being talked about, making sure I am a pest to my representatives. Making sure my voice and opinion are loud and clear, also making sure others speak up too. That makes a difference. We just have to fight harder for more bills with teeth and consequences for the various entities that handle data and let it spill. Like actual business ending fines and real punishments. Setting actual standards that are sane, secure, can be optimized and built upon.
That code is still suspect to me, as random code generators aren’t known for creating maintainable code…People have to audit that shit to make it serviceable, which greats bigger workloads. Breaking the spirit of mostly volunteers with such inexpertly crafted code is just not the best idea.
Yeah, Trainers do act badly because they weren’t regulated to hell and back early on…With clear and decisive lines that shouldn’t be crossed. With rules that needed to be followed, people paid for their data or compensated for hammering personal websites. A lot of the data gets data laundered and put in training sets, but can be found in models, said models can be made to reproduce phrases. It’s honestly nasty work, that should’ve never been allowed to get out of control like it has. However, it was doomed to be this way because an absolute morally compromised fool is sitting in the White House so the major US creatures…Are going to get away with a lot for as long as possible. As for other countries, well, they don’t seem too keen on regulating so called “AI” as much as they should be. They are coo coo for corporate lies.
I am a pest to my representatives
Keep it up. I’m in Floriduh so talking to our representatives is more or less like talking to a brick wall. They may accumulate counts of how many people raise an issue, but for the most part they’re serving the federal administration’s agenda, not listening to their constituents.
People have to audit that shit to make it serviceable, which greats bigger workloads
I mostly ignored LLM code generation until around August of 2025 - it was still pretty raw back then, but it was showing potential for significant improvement, and since then there has been significant improvement. At this point, I find that if I ride herd on the LLM agent and keep it focused, structured, addressing technical debt frequently, etc. I can actually review the generated code more quickly and easily than similarly mature code by human developers. What is coming out of models like Opus 5.5 now is looking like what I would write if I had all the time in the world to cover all the edge cases, handle all the errors, do the logging and auditing and all the other “good stuff”. It does explode the code for what was a simple “happy path” thing into a much larger structure that takes the real world problems into account and gets in front of them, handling them gracefully and presenting clear messages about what went wrong when unavoidable problems happen.
I guess what I’m saying is: yeah, we’re still getting more code to review, but it’s getting easier to review and the presence of meaningful automated tests and consistent documentation and non-rotten traceability from requirements through all that is actually resulting in lower overall workloads once you look at the big picture of what it takes to maintain code in the real world with security and other issues and not just the happy insecure proof of concept and ship it world.
Breaking the spirit of mostly volunteers with such inexpertly crafted code is just not the best idea.
Yeah, if your models are giving you inexpertly crafted code, you need to keep iterating with them until it’s expertly crafted before shipping it, don’t just throw up a pull request because some bogus tests passed. And, there’s still a difference among models - they’ve all improved rather dramatically over the last 12 months, but for my purposes (coding robust, secure, safe applications) Claude’s Opus and Sonnet are still “in the lead” by a pretty good margin. Other models are better at other things…
Trainers do act badly because they weren’t regulated to hell and back
There’s not enough transparency or accountability in the global business landscape for any kind of regulation to actually work. If these regulations are going to have any chance, the first step has to be true transparency - like FOSS does with open source development repositories, and more.
people paid for their data or compensated for hammering personal websites.
Keep dreaming. It would be a wonderful world, but it’s far from where we are.
said models can be made to reproduce phrases
Like English majors can quote Keats after graduation… I’m not sure that’s proof of plagarism in their other writing.
an absolute morally compromised fool
Yeah, it’s been an interesting ride this cycle - seems like they’re trying to tear down the government institutions in preparation for something like Palpatine disbanding the Senate… destroy all confidence by blowing up every problem of the past and flaunting it as something actively done at the highest levels. If they succeed in holding power through the upcoming mid-terms the ride is only going to get more interesting…
Keep it up. I’m in Floriduh so talking to our representatives is more or less like talking to a brick wall. They may accumulate counts of how many people raise an issue, but for the most part they’re serving the federal administration’s agenda, not listening to their constituents.
Yeah, I live in a mostly Red, with Blue islands…So I understand this. Making myself a pest, at least some of the more toxic privacy bills haven’t passed. Still, it’s annoying that this is an ongoing fight.
Keep dreaming. It would be a wonderful world, but it’s far from where we are.
Clearly, that requires work, consumer rights is an uphill struggle because the capitalists have created an environment that benefits them and directly disadvantages us the consumer.
Yeah, if your models are giving you inexpertly crafted code…
I just feel that LLMs should be used for their original purpose: Processing language, not used to generate code. Coding should stay a human activity. Instead of wasting time and money training models to the point that the providers of LLMs are in economic danger; perhaps continuing to invest in humans, teaching the craft in ways that help get new programmers up to speed faster. Would be a better use of time and energy, in my opinion. As I said, I am very dismissive of “AI” and believe the craft of programming/creativity be in the hands of human beings. Unlike the peddlers of LLMs, who wish to channel skill into the hands of the wealthy and wealth away from those who have skill.
Like English majors can quote Keats after graduation… I’m not sure that’s proof of plagarism in their other writing.
I was tired, when I wrote this response, so what I mean to mention how Anthropic literally trained on copyrighted material without permission and could be prompted to produce author’s material. It’s a bit different than a Student quoting an author.
Yeah, it’s been an interesting ride this cycle - seems like they’re trying to tear down the government institutions in preparation for something like Palpatine disbanding the Senate… destroy all confidence by blowing up every problem of the past and flaunting it as something actively done at the highest levels. If they succeed in holding power through the upcoming mid-terms the ride is only going to get more interesting…
I think that the sloshing power that people realize is within our hands can be utilized/weaponized by voting, making proper choices that will disturb the current dynamic which current dynamic which empowers the Trump administration. I will be voting in my interests by choosing Blue candidates as it will upset the power balance. The bots have been out in force trying to convince both sides are bad, but clearly one side is truly worse than the others. So…We shall see how that pans out.
LLMs should be used for their original purpose: Processing language, not used to generate code. Coding should stay a human activity.
That ability to see the patterns in language, particularly the ability to distill semantic meaning and make (reasonable, if imperfect) translations from one language to a variety of others, is incredibly useful in software development activities, which are basically the task of translating natural language requests into code - usually through a multi-step process of: requirements definition, design specification, application development, test development, and constant review to ensure that all those steps are in-sync, describing the same thing.
continuing to invest in humans
Always.
teaching the craft in ways that help get new programmers up to speed faster.
I’m tempted to make a “better buggy whip maker” crack here…
Anthropic literally trained on copyrighted material without permission and could be prompted to produce author’s material. It’s a bit different than a Student quoting an author.
Yeah, so Anthropic didn’t pay for legitimate textbooks when they went to school, they bought cheap, illegal, Asian photocopies instead… wrong, sure. How do you make it right now? Lobotomize the students who read illegally copied books? Fine their parents for everything they are worth? Or, hold the students liable and garnish their wages in perpetuity?
So…We shall see how that pans out.
Yep…
I honestly trust him. He knows what he’s doing. He isn’t a kid who just got their hands on a new tool
We as society in general keep seeing over and never to trust those in charge to any degree without proper verification.
No one is immune to LLMs bullshit. The studies are not good, none of them that are reputable anyway.
Even if Linus is himself capable, his use and endorsement of AI is going to have the massive knock on effect of people learning less and less to code properly.
Progress for progress sake is not what Linux is even about.
So we’re “move fast and break things” now by the looks of it and I don’t like it.
A problem is that the whole train of tech is moving very fast, for good or for bad. For one thing, when bugs are being exploited by AI in mass, tge only way to fight is by using AI to fix them in mass. No other way round it. So the workload has increased immensly. And other OS are probably on their path with new capabilities and tech.
if linux doesn’t stay relevant, it will become obsolete. We love linux and we want it to be the more dominant OS, while staying FOSS and ethical, right?
Linus has to keep the pace and I don’t think we have a single person more competent and knowledgeable about OS than Linus. We should support him and help. Infighting and nagging will only wear down the already small and fragile FOSS community and adopters. I think it’s the best thing for corporates to kick down FOSS
Sure. I don’t know what the answer is, but I really don’t think everyone lining up like lemmings to walk off the same cliff is the answer.
It’s sad to see Linus freely advertise for fascist corporations.
It’s sad to see Linus inspire thousands of aspiring coders to now learn the wrong lessons, because that’s absolutely what will happen. Anyone trying to learn to code right now is proper fucked.
Linus’ knowledge and other maintainers knowledge will likely die with him now because shortcuts are inevitable and people will understand less and less the more they offload.
We keep seeing this repeated, literally hundreds of times in just the past year alone. Code bases are shit, people who maintained them either fucked, or worse started vibe coding, and the LLM yes man machine isn’t gonna not blow smoke up Torvalds ass just because he is Linus.
I understand your points, and I agree with most of it.
It’s just, this feels like someone has a heroin addiction, and our solution is to get them hooked on alcohol.
I also agree with your points on ethics and the knowledge shrinking. But I can’t think of a sane route. Not using AI in the current state will leave the kernel behind (at least in security matters which is obvious), and using it will degrade the quality of the software itself, and its community.
Well, shit. I appreciate the conversation at least!
This. Tools work as well as you use them. Absolutist hatred of AI is just brain slop.
Unless one’s absolutist hatred of AI is based on hatred of the billionaire class and Big Tech, and love of the environment. Right?
lolwat? Hating one thing just because you hate another thing sounds completely irrational.
Hating one thing just because you hate another thing sounds completely irrational.
If A creates B, and A is worthy of hate, it’s not necessarily irrational to hate B as well. Context is important; in some cases, hating B would be irrational, in others it would be logical. Your point is too absolute to be correct.
In the specific context of the use of LLMs, it can be perfectly fair to condemn the existence and use of Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, Grok, etc. because of the harm their billionaire owners and investors are causing to the world, even if the LLMs aren’t otherwise necessarily bad.
Billionairess own grocery stores and every other type of thing. That would be a stupid reason to hate any of those things.
