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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 know you said all, but I'm curious which part do you think is horse shit? Do you think Torvalds is lying about using AI all together? or just how useful AI actually was? The commit with the alleged AI use is in the an RC for the next release, and it is authored by Torvalds.
His story was a bit less flattering. The narrative the advocates want is that Torvalds is all in on vibe coding the kernel.
The actual story is that he found it somewhat useful, even as it gave him wrong information and directed him to get help from a developer. A useful, but limited augmentation.
If Torvald's account were the accepted reality, they wouldn't be steamrolling rural locals to make so many datacenters and wouldn't be demanding we need more natural gas power, and wouldn't represent the majority of our economy. They would have utility and be available, but not so obnoxious. Well, maybe, they might not have bothered with so much expense in training for this level of capability, but the cost is sunk now.
Of course most development isn't Torvald's level, it is human slop. So there's more to things than the actually complicated work that AI is limited for.
But it's not only critics that oversimplify. Advocates are obnoxiously bad at declaring everything is all good with AI