A hot potato: Linus Torvalds' stance toward AI appears to be softening. After pointing out that AI tech was 90% marketing and 10% factual reality in 2024, Torvalds just said that Linux is not an "anti-AI" project, and that anyone who has an issue with this can either walk away or fork the kernel.
Torvalds' comments came in response to a discussion about anti-LLM feelings on lore.kernel.org, the official public archive for Linux kernel development mailing lists. He said that while he realizes some people really dislike AI, it's an area where he's willing to "absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer."
"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. Or just walk away."
The Linux creator added that AI is a tool, just like any other, and a useful one at that. He said that while there are other questions around AI, such as what its economic impact will ultimately look like, "is it useful" was no longer one of those questions.
AI can be a "somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from an 'it keeps finding embarrassing bugs' standpoint," Torvalds said. "But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing 'La La La, I can't hear you' at the top of your voice like some people seem to do."
"We're not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it."
Torvalds admitted that AI isn't perfect, but he believes anyone who points to the technology's problems better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time. "Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either," he said.
The Finnish software engineer appeared to take a more cautious approach to AI back in 2024. In addition to complaining that it was 90% marketing hype, he said it would take five years for it to become clear what AI is really useful for. It looks like that usefulness has become apparent in a shorter timeframe than expected.
– Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) October 21, 2024
In January, Torvalds said he had started using AI to write code, though only as part of a small personal project rather than on Linux. A few months later, he criticized Linux developers for filing poorly timed bug reports shortly before an RC5 release, noting that some relied on AI to flag trivial issues. He added that many of the proposed fixes were also AI-generated and often introduced unnecessary bloat into the Linux kernel instead of addressing the underlying problem.
Torvalds' comments suggest AI has already moved beyond the experimental stage for Linux, even if developers are still grappling with the extra workload, questionable fixes, and occasional kernel bloat it creates.