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Linus Torvalds used AI to fix a Linux bug, and now LLM critics on Linux face an uncomfortable choice
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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I’m glad Linus is pragmatic about this, ethical questions aside LLM’s are a highly valuable tool in software development and they are likely to continue to improve. Any engineer fighting the use of LLM’s will ultimately find that their peers are achieving more in a shorter time then they are. Open weight LLM’s have also come a long way and are already good enough for daily use.
I've been reading this for 3 years and all I've seen so far is my peers making more work for me by going on wild goose chases and making me wade through slop. I do believe there are ways to use it responsibly and productively but that is definitely not what is happening on average.
I don't understand why so many people decided to take "LLMs increase productivity" as an axiom instead of using their fucking eyes and looking at what is happening around them.
I remember people being angry at IDEs for making programming too easy and belittling code colourization as for children.
There will always be a crowd that wants everything to stay the way they know it.
It's usually the illiterate that proclaim the sharpest opinions too. Linus is very steady and rational on this, he sees the operator as responsible and the real author. Which is I think how it should be. It reminds me of piracy debates in early internet. You have to be insane to think it is possible to prevent the use of a tool that you could just use and not say you used. It's just futile and honestly just a counter psychosis of the same polarized issue. I just wanna tell both sides: Its not really a debate, because nobody is in charge or could ever enforce a decision either way. It's also a form of privilegium overload to just think we can legislate or de-arm this knowledge and hunt the users down. It is an extreme position to think that it isn't going to continue existing.
Some people still think that digital artists aren't real artists.
Conservatives.
How do you measure that?
I am asking because I tried all the AI coding tools (copilot, cursor, claude code, etc.), even the paid versions, to find the utopia that doubles my productivity where lots of people are talking about. But everytime I find they take more time to generate code than me typing it, they rarely get things right the first time, they produce way more code than needed (which is much more to reason about) and all in all it takes longer to achieve something using "AI" instead of doing it on my own.
The worst results are the ones that seem to be correct, but can only be found incorrect on closer inspection. For instances, a part of my job is to write data collection applications for sensors; those sensors come with a datasheet (usually 100 to 200 pages) that explain how to "talk" to the sensor. Sounds perfect for an LLM - throw the datasheet in, get a small C application out. But either I get something that does not even compile, or something that seems to collect data, but configures the sensor completely wrong. Debugging that takes more time than just working through the datasheet myself and program it myself.
Yeah, my work is forcing us to use Claude for everything now. More than ever, I'm convinced that using AI is slower and worse than me just doing it by hand.
UNLESS, if I blindly accept the output, then Claude is faster. Sure, I can close the ticket in 15 minutes. Is it right? Idk. Is it good? Idk. Does it have bugs? Idk. Did it make shit up? Idk. Did anything even get compiled or tested? Idk. The ticket is closed though and that's all that matters, apparently.
The other day I did a google search for a basic JavaScript function. Gemini gave me almost the exact function that I needed. Should I have closed my eyes or smashed my head with a hammer until I forgot? Ofc I used it. It was the first result, helpful, and easy.
I don't believe in "AI" since it doesn't exist, but these augmented or summarized searches can definitely be helpful. I imagine it's the same with other LLMs, search engines, etc.
Well that's because copilot and cursor are pure shit, and claude code is overpriced and over rated.
TBH I have been hopping between agent frameworks, but mostly I use locally run Qwen or Deepseek to draft individual function blocks or brainstorm in a notepad interface:
https://github.com/lmg-anon/mikupad
And manually insert them as I review the code... I like my stuff uncomplicated and unobstructed.
If I were to pick an API provider today, I'd buy one year of Xiaomi MiMo, because it is dirt cheap and good enough. GLM and Deepseek are great, but more expensive since they are popular now.
They are really not that distinct, all the models cheat off each other just like they cheat copyrights.
The entire premise of chatbots is to have a simple natural-language interface instead of those scary GUIs and programming languages. The idea that maybe they didn't know enough about how to interact with ai, and that's why it failed to help them, is a little silly, and the more you explain how we're all using ai wrong, the sillier you look.
You've obviously sunk a lot of costs into genai, both in time and money, and that is making you defensive. Somebody that isn't impressed by Claude premium isn't going to do any of what you suggest, let alone get any more value out of it, and that's valid for them. You're not seriously interested in helping them professionally, you are just insecure.
I dispute all of this
Absolutely not. This is not what text models were made for, it's what jerks like Altman and Modi twisted them into with marketing.
I'm not blaming the user, I'm saying they're crap services. I think the superlative/cursing is necessary here; they are so bad and enshittified it is astounding.
I have paid a total of a few bucks into APIs, I've never had a Claude or OpenAI subscription in my life. I don't know why you would assume this.
I'm not insecure about this. I don't need LLMs or generative ML, though I am interested in it. I have many dire personal issues, but people are free to program however they wish and I'm not going to gaslight anyone about that.
I do think text models have been bastardized into "a simple natural-language interface instead of those scary GUIs and programming languages." That is NOT what they were intended to do, no matter how much Claude tries to sell people on it. I think this misunderstanding is extremely important because it's exactly what's propping up abominations/scams like OpenAI/Anthropic.
But they can still be extremely useful tools in narrower scopes, like all machine learning has for over a decade, and I'm not going to shy away advocating for that. I do resent all of LLMs being pigeonholed so tightly, and if people are going to try them, I at least want to point them to a more reasonable/frugal source than Claude premium and Claude Code.
Evangelizing llms is pretty much all you do on here, you have spent an enormous amount of time and effort on them. If you're not even willing to accept that you have sunk costs relating to genai, your stating "I'm not insecure about this" is really not compelling.
This is a fair point. I talk about it a lot here, too much TBH.
Sorting by New Comments, topics like this are mostly what come up and peak my interest... I suppose I need to curate/moderate my Lemmy feed, like I've been telling myself I should do for some time.
And his here is the problem. Oh yeah lets just waive off the biggest critisicm on and issue of AI.
Hitler was a pretty neat guy, ethnic cleansing aside.
And before you say this, no, i am not comparing you to hitler, I'm only using an over the top example to hopefully make my point more clear.
I think the better analogy is, the advances in rocketry made under hitler were pretty neat and just because Hitler was an evil guy who did evil shit doesn't mean we should have thrown that away. By all means stop giving money and influence to the big AI companies, but the advances made can still be repurposed.
Yes so of course my actual opinion is a little more nuanced than this. I absolutely see the uses of AI, I won't deny that. I just fundamentally disagree with the way it is being used right now (by which I mean the gas-turbine-powered datacenters it requires, the noise pollution they create, the unethical/outright illegal acquiring of training data.
If you're using a local model, whose training did not deprive actual people of huge amounts of water or electricity, and did not use stolen data, I'm all for it. But most people aren't, they're using ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever Microsoft is making.
Continuing your analogy, this would be like flying rockets manufactured by the third reich, not other companies using the same technologies.
The main difference is that rockets are expressly for the purpose of murdering people, so I would argue that the research shouldn't be continued or done at all.
Fortunately I'm pretty sure that people developing these computer programs are serious about trying not to murder people - even if just for legal reasons.
Rockets literally got us to the moon what do you mean.
Will the Tesla be the next Beetle?
"Ai is literally Hitler"
-fediverse user, 2026
I hope you're joking, but I did explicitly state that was not my intention.
Wow, just speedrunning Godwin's Law, aren't we?
I guess I'm going to go back to work and talk to my five LLM sessions that are working on different tickets.
Wasting all that extra water will certainly teach him a lesson.
If that's the only example available that illustrates the point, then you have not spent enough time thinking through your idea.
Do better.
lmao fuck off
Yeah, ethical, environmental, legal and fuck the consumer memory questions aside.
That’s every corp and government in existence.
Well it’s about time those slackers caught up. And all they needed was a slop machine.
I think most misplaced critic comes from people not understanding or knowing the different types of AI. Some even hate all types of intelligence it seems.
Chess engines have been using AI, specifically, neural networks, for years before ChatGPT or other LLMs. Nobody complained.
What are you talking about?
Chess using neural nets didn't happen until around 2017 with Alpha Zero, based on Google DeepMind.
Ie.. Two years after OpenAI was founded. ChatGPT is part of the exact same tech rush.
Nobody complained because chess is harmless, ChatGPT is not 🤷
Chess engines didn't require data centers that guzzle water and spit out pollution like an 18th century factory.
Exactly right. That is the distinction I'm trying to draw.
Here we go again!
You conflate one type of AI with all the other ones. Call it LLM or generative AI.
I programmed AI 20 years ago, it still is AI but doesn't use datacenters. I programmed deep neural networks ten years ago, it did not use datacenters either.
And that’s why no one is opposed to those.
You didn’t pirate the collective works of humanity to train on, while under a society that requires intellectual property rights to ensure those creators are compensated, in order to undercut them twice (once to train and once to replace them)
You didn’t pollute the sky, dry the soil, bulldoze people’s homes to make your chessbot.
You didn’t corner the market on components to brute force the solution to declare yourself computer god, where everyone must come to you for compute.
Gen AI seeks to replace humans and it’s not even sentient. I don’t give a single fuck how useful a fancy algorithm is, it’s not ok with me if it’s designed to destroy my life.
No but we did all that for Taylor swift and Walmart. Hopefully you don’t do anything with any major brands at all.
Well do the work and call it for what it is, not just "AI".
Generative AI.
LLM
Is it truly that hard?
I mean you seem to want to, and thus we can have a discussion about it, which I favour instead of having people just being generally angry it seems.
The day when it doesn't crush the environment, should we use gen AI to help us in our daily lives? Or should we not? Is there something good in it? Or isn't it? I'd love seing constructive discussions but they just get globbed by people thinking with their gut it seems. Like if you don't hate "AI" then you're pro genocide.
Sorry for the rant!
They did, just on a smaller scale, and they used all games ever played by high-level players. LLMs and image generators were stealing data years before they became viable. And nobody gave a shit.
Let's not pretend most people give a shit about ethics or the environment. Those were impacted long before AI became viable in any way. People hate on AI because it's affecting everyday prices and employment. Ethics and environment are just convenient shiny arguments few actually stand behind.
If tomorrow billionaires turned around and said "actually, here's UBI for everyone, provided by AI!", most people would be cheering on intellectual theft and destruction of this earth, and call everyone still against it selfish and regressive.
Ethics and environmental destruction are "convenient shiny arguments"?? Go fuck yourself you delusional shill. Praying for a billionaire saviour while gagging on their boots, fuck you.
It's all about scale, there aren't billions of chess engine users.