new and interesting tools
Looks Under The Generative AI Hood
Sees Snakeoil Salesman Selling Labotomies As The Future
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
194 points (93.3% liked)
Linux
68113 readers
978 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Cory Doctorow's "Reverse Centaurs Guide to Life After AI" has a short section that pertains to this. He talks about how someone like Linus essentially doesn't have a boss and has untold resources for whatever "AI" "tools" he finds useful.
He isn't ever forced to use the wrong tool for the job or use a tool that simply doesn't do what his boss thinks it does. He doesn't have to worry about getting fired or his coworkers getting fired because his boss was sold a story about reducing labor costs with this cool new "tool". He simply uses what's useful to him with the probably millions of dollars of compute made available to him by the tech giants.
95% of people don't have that luxury. They have a boss itching to get rid of them or 10x their workload with the help of the "tool" that Linus is so happily and defiantly praising on behalf of the monopolists.
I don't see how this means he's wrong though, if people are hating AI as a proxy for hating their abusive relationship with their employer, that doesn't seem like a strong argument that everyone who isn't in that situation must also hate AI.
It doesn't mean he's wrong! it means he's out of touch and doing the propaganda work of capital for free much like many other self-employed/business owning/petit-borgeois people who think they're on the side of capital.
It also means that his praise for and indeed positive experience with this "tool" is largely irrelevant to the broader social/economic discourse surrounding so called AI.
Blind hatred for AI as a technology is inherantly reactionary, but that doesn't mean that the implementation of the technology today isn't problematic in many ways.
Yeah I notice he doesn't address the costs, economic and environmental, of LLM proliferation. Way to ignore a large part of the argument while calling anyone opposed to your position stupid.
I hope he gets to eat those words one day, but I doubt he would ever admit he was wrong.
load more comments
(2 replies)
AI is just a tool, the user of a tool should be competent enough to use it properly
The other practical side of this is enforceability.
Lets say Linux banned all use of VSCode in contributions, this second. And any Microsoft tools. No exceptions. And it makes sense, because there is an evil blatantly anti-linux entity behind it... What are people gonna do?
Keep using it anyway, and just not disclose it.
This is why linux doesn't tell people what tools they can and can't use. Practically, they can't police what tools people use, just what they contribute. Just like (to a reasonable degree) they don't try to police people who contributes to the kernel, but instead judge them by their contributions. Other contributors don't have to like those tools or contributors, but that is how a project like this must operate.
Maybe the rule should be that if you use AI, just make sure Linus can’t tell you did.
the thing is - no other tool (currently ^yall_cant_read^) in our industry, and others, out there involves as much active destruction in both the working class and environment in its use.
that’s it. that’s the bit.
for those not understanding: the word “in” above implies in current use not that i am comparing AI’s effects with the invention of knitting machines or electricity.
No it's just the newest tool that does that.
Are your clothes machine knitted? Do you know you're destroying the jobs of people who hand knitted clothes? And let's not forget the art form of hand knitting that is now being insulted by people who buy machine knitted clothes without a care. And let's not forget about the environmental impact of knitting machines that require electricity while hand knitting doesn't!
The same could be said about so many things.
There isn't really a fundumental difference thar I can see between AI and other tools, at least that I can see.
the newst tool happens to be the one doing the most destruction, so.. yes.
also: i do knit, lol. just a coincidence in example.
I don't think AI is the most destructive at all. AI is responsible for around 1% of carbon emissions (do your own research if you want a proper source). There are so many things, such as cars that emit way more than this.
As for job loss there are so many things that have eliminated so many more jobs. Tractors, knitting machines, production lines, automation in factories etc. No one says we should stop using tractors so we can have more jobs for farmers.
also: i do knit, lol. just a coincidence in example.
That's funny, I've got a half knitted scarf somewhere but I've never gotten into it properly.
Now do it for the planned capacity of every AI data center currently planned or under construction or waiting for compute manufacturing by the big tech monopolists, and the trillions of dollars of labor that they're telling the world they'll replace whether the product is capable of it or not.
The bot doesn't have to be able to do your job to displace your labor. It only has to convince your boss that it can. Right now the big tech monopolists are actively convincing the entire world's bosses that they can replace your labor. This doesn't have to be true to be a labor issue, and it certainly doesn't have to be true to be a devastating economic bubble.
get back to the scarf! i have a blanket im working on too lol.
but yeah. i think from our sw/eng industry, ai is at the least the one with the steepest destructive “curve”, i suppose.
ty for your reply.
Could have said the same about the invention of electricity
The invention of the light bulb.
That has been SO much worse than the negatives we've seen with AI. If anyone is interested, that is a horrible story socially, industrially, environmentally, etc. Definitely worth reading about.
yes. indeed. two things can be true at once.
load more comments
(3 replies)
here is the email this screenshot is an excerpt of; the specific "X" (the thing which the message Linus is replying to here suggested perhaps AI should not be used for) was the writing of commit messages.
That does change things a bit
When the topic is AI, the quality of some of these Lemmy threads drops down to the level of YouTube comments.
Vague criticisms, fallacious reasoning, highly emotive language, little response to attempts at discussion (though some might engage in disingenuous discussions of shifting goalposts here and there to discourage particularly vocal engagees from future participation). So I'd say that Linus is just the latest convenient scapegoat in an Anti-AI 'trend' that will have little impact on the rate of AI adoption in the long run.
Sucks that I waited until now to try to form a measured opinion on AI because now all the discussions on the internet are hot garbage.
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.
load more comments
(3 replies)
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.
load more comments
(5 replies)
It’s a pretty reductive take, that treats tools as politically and behaviorally inert. The work on understanding how cultural artifacts use us just as much as (or maybe more than) we use them goes back several centuries.
But Linus is just an engineer, after all. There’s no reason to treat him as some high-minded philosopher (and he’d probably be the first to tell you that). And for as long as the history of thought into the politics of artifacts may be, the history of engineers focusing only on solving the problem in front of them and not thinking about “where the rockets come down” is about as long.
view more: next ›