this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I got banned from the Fuck AI community for saying Linus isn’t stupid. Not that he’s right on AI, just that he’s not stupid.
Indeed, the atmosphere is toxic.
We’re on a site where people happily discuss their arr stack or transpiring the PS5 system, but bemoan AI is killing artists and coding.
There are real ethical issues, job impacts, environmental issues, property rights issues (real and intellectual), privacy, a stack of cards economy etc.
But there is also utility, and frankly the genie is out of the bottle. For better or worse.
Catching kernel bugs in Linux with AI should be seen as a good because they’re not being exploited offensively by private actors. AI review that catches the most annoying 80% of errors or issues saves human time, while not contributing slop to the kernel.
There is a lot to discuss if you show up in good faith.
Also, Linus is an asshole. Why would anyone be surprised he reacted like an asshole? His point on his expectations is actually clear and sensible to me. He probably could have said just that, but he’s an asshole, and acting how you would expect after a bunch of people are yelling at him.
Just don't engage with any community that starts with "fuck" if you have any kind of nuance for the subject matter.
It's not a great time. If you don't get banned, you'll get dogpiled with angry and idiotic comments anyway, by people who have decided their own facts already.
Nuance is a hard concept to get in most Lemmy comment threads. It's obvious it's just a tool that uses an insane amount of resources that can do some good in certain applications. The problem stems from it being abused for evil and stupid things.
Can AI be used to help flag cancerous growths in x rays and help save lives? Absolutely! Can it also be used to track every human being on the planet for surveillance purposes while its proponents build massive biome-destroying data centers to act as the infrastructure? It sure can!
All that said, I still don't feel confident about rolling in AI code to open source projects when bots aren't accountable to their contributions. They should require a huge amount of oversight which I doubt is happening at the moment.
Agreed.
On AI contributed code I’m always confused, if I put MY name on it and push it I am stating it meets my standards. If I allow a Claude contributed commit into my code, I am stating Claude passed my standards.
If someone is contributing and it’s not up to standards, why is it getting merged? If it’s a maintainer and they’re merging crap with review or standards then you couldn’t have actually trusted them pre-LLMs.
Ever since the first iteration of GitHub Copilot it was always your responsibility to make sure contributions to your project were correct. The beauty of open source is that when a project jumps off a cliff you can fork it or make your own.
Partially what is good about Linus is historically Linux has said no to crap, and the Linux team expend considerable effort to remove crap they realized was crap too late.
From my layperson understanding, the true program is not the lines of code, it's the model that lives in the programmer's brain. The code is just an extension of that.
If it needs debugging, it is the mental model that helps. If you need to add a feature, same thing. If a few years go by and no one remembers how the code works, rebuilding that mental model is the first step in making progress.
I suspect that it used to be that if someone contributed good code to the kernel project, it meant that they had a sufficient mental model. But with AI, it can seem like they do.
Maybe if you're Linus your understanding of the kernel is so strong it would take years to atrophy, if at all. I don't know. But developers in general?
Too many times in my work life, people have told me one thing, but it turns out that AI invented that and they didn't really know what they were talking about. On things that I'm an expert in, I can catch it. But if I'm not an expert, I don't realize the mistake until a consequence occurs.
Allowing AI is basically making it so the maintainers have to be complete experts in everything they accept. Maybe that was already the case, but that is my layperson understanding of it.
I want to expand on your first thought and just say that in my experience the internet as a whole is not a great place for nuanced takes, and I've noticed that becoming mirrored in reality over the last decade. Perhaps its been happening for longer.
There's so much going on, and so many actors trying to influence the masses. I don't blame anyone for having different conclusions to my own, there's an almost untrackable amount of sources to draw information (and disinformation) from. I just hope we can get to a point together where we can (again?) discuss nuance without ceding to emotion.
I got banned from saying not all that is called ai is bad by giving video game npcs from the last decades as an example.
I thought it was just llms that they where against but nope. I imagine Alan Turing spinning in his grave.