- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/linux@programming.dev/p/2509642/linus-torvalds-posts-his-first-ai-assisted-patch-to-the-linux-kernel-synthetic-test-clo
cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/linux@programming.dev/p/2509642/linus-torvalds-posts-his-first-ai-assisted-patch-to-the-linux-kernel-synthetic-test-clo
As per Linux kernel AI policy (and a common fucking sense), you’re the one responsible for the code that is submitted from your side, regardless of the tools and pipeline you use. Now get this, when an agent makes a mistake, that you didn’t notice, that’s still a learning opportunity, especially when you’re held accountable for the fuck up.
True… When you give them a general task that involves solution of technical problems and decision making. But when it’s a concrete “do the x thing over here, using this, this, and this”, which is then accompanied by your manual review of the changes, they actually do fine, basically allowing you to minimize the tedium, while not robbing you of the most interesting and important parts of development.
Did Linus’s pipeline look like what i described, tho, when he introduced the aforementioned bugs? Was it his technical decision that, by proxy, introduced bugs? I don’t know. Regardless of the answers, he’s a grown-ass man, and thus is responsible for the consequences of his decisions.
Is he more likely to introduce a bug now that he uses AI? Only time will show. I might be wrong, but i think Linus is too smart for it to be the case.
Despite the “AI policy and common sense” saying that the contributor is responsible for understanding the code committed, Linus did clealry not treat this with the due dilligence required. He used unproven error-prone technology to emit code for a project that millions of users depend on and sent it in despite it having the race condition and the performance regression.
If Linus was as smart as you seem to believe, he should have checked that code as if it was submitted from his worst enemy, as if it was written by a smarter and malicous adversary or at least a very enthusiastic imbecile. But the LLMs are designed in a way that trick you into believing that they are smart, reasoning and capable and you drop your guard. The code looked good, he got fooled and here we are.