201
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
201 points (92.8% liked)
Technology
87680 readers
3379 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In his commit message:
Didn't he state quite early on that LLMs were a good tool to spot bugs? Found this from 3 years ago: https://blog.mathieuacher.com/LinusTorvaldsLLM/
Regardless of how he got there, this is a pretty obnoxious and useless commit message...
Seriously. You don't need to outline your whole journey to finding the bug, commentary on the tools you used, and how it all made you feel, just what the problem was and how it was fixed. Put the rest in a blog post.
Pretty wild seeing a programmer anthropomorphize their applications and mislabel them as "AI".
The Big Lai runs deep.
Okay I'm seeing a lot of your replies here this is a really weird argument to make. You're literally arguing from symantics.
Whatever's the outcome, the anthropomorphization in that message stinks 🤮
That's a core part of the grift. Even people who supposed hate "AI" still promote this kind of anthropomorphic disinformation. It's rampant.
Dude, I'm not an AI zealot, but I anthropomorphize my socks.
Yeah but people aren’t having conversations with your socks thinking they actually are alive and your socks don’t then talk said people into suicide so I’m pretty sure it’s at least a little bit different.
Trying to avoid anthropomorphising something with which you interact via natural language is incredibly laborious, and achieves nothing.
Avoiding false statements achieves scientific accuracy and honest progress rather than grifting and bullshit.
And TBH it's not at all difficult for me to distinguish between my computer and a human.
Silly humans, antropomorphizing everything. Say, what species are you?
Correct. A being of power should never anthromorphise. It is a thing of flesh. I laugh at that because I am human and I never anthromorphise even the slightest part of a marble slab. I must be superior to most humans I guess. The forest people, though, those are legit just uninformed I think. I hate those creaks they make. I mean generate. I mean the wind . I mean no i mean the sound that nobody years because nobody is there and only humans and tree people are alive and the other animals are biological machines that we must try to ignore even if they lick us on the face wagging their tiny tail at us. For they are unworthy. I mean its tail. If it generates tail wags it is only an impression of aliveness and we must stand firm beside our tree people brothers and sisters on this.
I like it.
Hackers use LLMs to spot odd exploits so it makes sense developers use them too. The usage of LLMs in development likely won‘t make Linux better or safer overall, because bugs and exploits wouldn‘t have been found by either side without it in the first place. It‘s like pandora‘s box where Linus is kind of forced to use it. If that makes sense.
Like an accelerating arms race.
Yes, but this has always been the case before and after this phony "AI" bullshit.
He might consider himself forced to use it to find bugs. He wouldn't be forced to use it to write the fix.
(Now you might say he wasn't or isn't, but even if that were true for the kernel at large this doesn't seem to be: https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/08/10/linus-torvalds-says-ai-has-made-huge-linux-kernel-updates-the-new-normal/5285268 And this seems like mostly to be on Linus, for not stepping in here.)
Following the hacker arm race is a good point. But also the number of bugs is not a bottomless pit. If an LLM allows to find more, and hopefully the test and reviews are good enough to limit the new opportunities to introduce some from LLMs, it should reduce the overall number of bugs and make the software generally safer.
Are you forgetting about Microsoft?