Remember everyone, everyone is human. There is no person with all the right opinions and there never will be. Never idolize, you will be burned
Funny how the loudest AI debates often happen without asking the people shipping the biggest software projects on Earth. Torvalds is basically saying: judge the tool by whether it reduces friction. That feels a lot more practical than treating every LLM like either magic or the end of civilization.
I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I’m 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. AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one.
I think broadly speaking what he says is reasonable. If you don’t want to use AI, then don’t, but I think it can be used somewhat responsibly.
I have all sorts of issues with AI tooling:
- the centralization of power
- the load it adds on maintainers because of the amount of slop bad developers (and non-devs) produce with it
- the environmental impacts of using larger models
- the data centers causing health risks
- the impact on the PC industry
- the degeneration of skills and knowledge.
That said, it’s a tool, and can be used to amplify good work too.
Yes, anyone who wants to protest any use of AI whatsoever in software development, just on pure principle, is on the fringe at this point. It is a tool and needs to be used responsibly but it’s no longer credible to say that it has no use or can’t be used responsibly.
and can be used to amplify good work too.
But at this point I would argue the downsides aren’t worth it. Especially when the bubble pops, subsidies run out, and people will be forced to pay the actual price
Yeah, it is effectively subsidized by VC right now.
I expect what will happen after the bubble bursts is that the only affordable models will be quite small ones, not the energy chugging behemoths we have now.
They’ve already started cranking up prices in enterprise.
Sir this is Lemmy, I’m surprised you’re not downvoted to hell
Lemmy users are sure to have a reasonable reaction to this take.
Well most of them won’t read beyond the headline; they’ll likely just make massive assumptions based on title and their own predispositions. Sounds to me like Linus is trying to leave room for some of the practical nature of LLMs and implement them as useful tools, but it seems like he may be a little ignorant of the various agendas of LLM developers themselves. Just my stupid take.
Linus is a very practical man. If your code is good, ai or not, it’s good, but if you use ai to break the userspace…
So they are going to autocomplete their takes based on the headline, I hope the irony isn’t lost on them.
Stupid leftists think orange man and AI bad? Cringe! Updoots to the left!
Lemmites deciding whether to delete their anti-AI comments or their pro-linux comments
I felt the message was OK-ish but it bothered me that he used the term “social warrior”, which is an older term used by right-wing chuds before they got married to “woke”
