Torvalds Tells Kernel Devs To Stop Debating AI Slop - Bad Actors Won't Follow the Rules Anyway (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0180554368
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/01/09/1649237/torvalds-tells-kernel-devs-to-stop-debating-ai-slop---bad-actors-wont-follow-the-rules-anyway
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/08/linus_versus_llms_ai_slop_docs/
Torvalds disagreed sharply. "There is zero point in talking about AI slop," he wrote. "Because the AI slop people aren't going to document their patches as such." He called such discussions "pointless posturing" and said that kernel documentation is "for good actors." The exchange comes as a team led by Intel's Dave Hansen works on guidelines for tool-generated contributions. Stoakes had pushed for language letting maintainers reject suspected AI slop outright, arguing the current draft "tries very hard to say 'NOP.'" Torvalds made clear he doesn't want kernel documentation to become a political statement on AI. "I strongly want this to be that 'just a tool' statement," he wrote.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/08/linus_versus_llms_ai_slop_docs/
Who Cares Where the Code Came From? (Score:2)
If the code is good, merge it! Otherwise, call it out and refuse it. Why is this so hard?
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly, code is either correct, standards complaint, efficent, understandable, and licensed appropriately or it fails at being one or more of those things. Linus and the other maintainers are not about to start accept patches they don't like, understand, or lack proper attribution / documentation.
So it really does not matter what the authoring process was, be how we normally think programmers work, the result of long conversations with inanimate plastic ducks, debates with the resident house cat, or the r
Re:Who Cares Where the Code Came From? (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm... since the kernel is GPL v2 specifically, doesn't it matter a lot what the license of the code generated is? What is the licensing status of the training data and does that directly affect the output? I feel like it does.
Re: (Score:2)
Unedited AI output is not copyrighted at all. And edits would have to be GPLv2 (or a compatible license) to be accepted just like when you would write the complete code yourself.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not about code, it's about review effort.
I was on the receiving end of an AI MR, which didn't even fix the bug it said it did, and the author visibly didn't even test it. I mean, even the added test cases didn't run. This idiot cost me 2 hours of my time, because I assumed good intentions and understanding.
This is the "slop" that needs to get evicted quickly, right at the beginning of the review process, otherwise already overstretched maintainers will quickly burn out.
Re: (Score:2)
But that's an argument for moving code from that "developer" into the "maybe I'll consider this if I've got time" bucket. Not an argument against AI. (I've known developers that didn't use AI that were as bad as you're describing.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you had to review a lot of this AI slop? It is a HUGE waste of the reviewers time. Most of the devs will use AI and never look at the code or actually test it. They are screwing over the reviewers by making them do it for them. It is just plain lazy and an a-hole move. Good testing can prevent most if it, but... time and resources.
Re: (Score:2)
Well for me, if I see an AI looking pull request, I will just nope out of it saying it needs a deeper write up to guide a review. If they do manage to coherently put something together that is consistent and sensible with the code, then and only then will I expend time looking at non-trivial pull request. If I see further sloppy mistakes or unmantainable code, then I'll again abort and say I did a partial review and already see some problems.
Pretty much have to get used to ignoring suspiciously big merge
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that LLM code looks god while usually being bad. Ordinary bad code is a lot easier to spot.
Re: (Score:2)
> The problem is that LLM code looks god while usually being bad.
I'm guessing (hoping) that was a typo and you meant "good", but also fear that's what many people think, or come to believe about AI and LLMs.
This much farther and no further fartherness. (Score:2)
I know they say this every time. But this is it! They're finally gonna fork the kernel!
Code is code. (Score:2)
Either it meets the high standards required by the kernel team or it doesn't. It doesn't matter if it was written by AI, aliens or Linus himself.
I use AI tools when coding and I've used it to generate code at times, but I read through it with a fine-toothed comb, test it thoroughly, and don't commit anything I don't 100% understand. I think anyone working on the kernel is easily capable of the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
This is it exactly. There's not even any point to trying to figure out whether it's idiot-generated slop or AI-generated slop. Just figure out whether or not it's slop, and then reject it if it is.
Re: (Score:2)
> This is it exactly.
It’s exactly true only for the easiest failure mode: obvious junk. Nobody needs an AI detector to reject garbage. Kernel maintainers have been rejecting human-generated garbage since before LLMs darkened the software dev community's skies. The hard problem isn’t slop. The hard problem is credible-looking patches that meet the immediate spec, match local style, compile cleanly, and still encode a subtle bug or a long-term maintenance tax.
> There's not even any point to trying to figure out whether it's idiot-generated slop or AI-generated slop.
If all you care about is trash vs not-trash, sure. But ker
Re: (Score:3)
[Reply to ConceptJunkie]
> Either it meets the high standards required by the kernel team or it doesn't.
That binary sounds great until you remember what “standards” actually means in kernel-land. It’s not just “passes tests” or “meets the spec.” The spec is the easy part. The standards also include: does it fit the subsystem’s design, does it avoid cleverness debt, does it behave across a zoo of arches/configs, does it keep the fast path fast, and can future maintainers reason about it without taking up candlelit lockdep seances.
Also: ker
Problem is not all slop (Score:4, Interesting)
I just saw an AI video about what if Harry Potter was raised by the Weasleys. Typical AI slop. Not worth viewing. The kind of thing that makes you hate the AI companies
Except.... The song is good.
Called "A Home Full of Love"
This was not a 'real' song, they made it up. Probably the AI wrote it, but it turned out fantastic. It is emotional and enough to make an orphan cry. The kind of song that could become a hit if it was sung by a real singer.
If you want to hear it, I suggest you close your eyes while listening to it because the visuals are not worth it. But the song is worth hearing.
Re: (Score:2)
A bowl of slop with one nice chunk of meat is still a bowl of slop.
Re: (Score:2)
Congratulations, you've been manipulated into emotional response by an imitation machine
Re: (Score:2)
All good music is emotional manipulation. Bad music fails to do that.
The fact it was created by an imitation machine rather than a person is significant, but not an insult.
Re: (Score:2)
Art involves manipulation on the part of a skilled musician or artist who is actively and intentionally moving you through a change of consciousness with their work. That is art. The manipulation of the perceiver performed by AI "art", however, is is not that. That is a different kind of manipulation--it is fundamentally insincere, and has no more feeling than an LLM does when it throws emojis at you.
The creator has no insight on how to move you, their only input is approving and modifying the final result.
Re: (Score:2)
> Art involves manipulation on the part of a skilled musician or artist who is actively and intentionally moving you through a change of consciousness with their work. That is art. The manipulation of the perceiver performed by AI "art", however, is is not that. That is a different kind of manipulation--it is fundamentally insincere, and has no more feeling than an LLM does when it throws emojis at you.
You are gatekeeping. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (or the ear, in the above case...)
Come, destroy my life's work! (Score:2)
A curious position: surrender to money.
Pragmatic position (Score:2)
This is basically the same position as his "we need no special handling for security bugs, we fix ALL bugs" position.
Concentrate on the quality, not the source (Score:2)
I agree with Linus, the bad actors won't follow the rules.
I also tend to agree that it's best not to make this a political fight. The problem with AI slop isn't that it's AI-generated, it's that it's low-quality slop. Yes, the former is a strong indicator that it's also the latter, but rejecting code because it's low-quality slop rather than because it's AI-generated avoids a long-drawn-out argument that doesn't server any technical purpose. I do support an explicit provision allowing maintainers to blackli
Use the tools (Score:2)
Just don't commit anything you haven't reviewed or don't thoroughly understand.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly this, the review process already exists and it exists for a reason.
If code is crap it will get rejected, it doesn't matter wether it was barfed out by an LLM or typed out manually by an inexperienced human programmer.
Re: Use the tools (Score:2)
It does take more time and effort on the behalf of the reviewer than the submitter. So it's potentially increasing the workload of maintainers dealing with 'helpdul' people 'researching' with llms
Re: Use the tools (Score:2)
How do you plan on enforcing that? There are still things in Commodore BASIC V2 I don't thoroughly understand
Re: (Score:2)
It is git ... and you are on your private branch.
So: commit often.