Linus Torvalds responded with an emphatic rejection of tool usage declarations.
He wrote:
What you are about is something entirely different. It has nothing to do with “expectations”, and it has everything to do with your hangups.
I don’t understand this whole idiotic concept of “don’t use AI for X”.
Here’s a new rule just for you: don’t use compilers for any of your kernel submissions.
Because if you can’t show that you really understand what the machine is actually doing by writing your code in assembler, then I don’t want to see your code contribution. You clearly aren’t competent if you can’t write it that way.
And btw, you had better not use an editor to write that commit message either.
Because I need you to show me that you can actually write a good commit message without using tools that make it easy to backspace and hide the mistakes you made while typing.
Ok?
Because otherwise those tool-assisted commits of yours clearly aren’t showing that you know what you are doing.
Do you not see how UTTERLY STUPID those kinds of rules would be?
So no. We’re not going to make stupid rules that say “you can’t use tools for X”.
The kind of expectations I have is that people do their best and I expect people to understand what they are doing.
But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use.
And quite honestly, in my experience, the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools. ®
The open source software movement was very much founded on the idea of being concerned about what kinds of tools we use as a society. Software that’s “just a tool” can lock you down and out of what you can do with it. Same argument can just as well be made that people were “shying away from using new and interesting tools” by running free software instead of Microsoft’s new priority stuff that locks you in
AI similarly gives massive control to a handful of companies. They have already used that leverage to intentionally sandbag tasks without telling you, when they think it’s against their economic interests (model distillation and AI research). Is it not possible to imagine that goes further, they would use that leverage to slip in backdoor, not report classes of bugs, etc.?
Do explain how open models like Qwen that you can run locally give massive control to handful of companies. In fact, what seems obvious is that using and improving these models is precisely what takes control away from these companies. People who started the free software movement didn’t cry like a bunch children about how much they hated software. They had the brains to understand the problem wasn’t the software itself, but rather who controls it. So, they went out and built open versions of the software that weren’t corporate owned. And try guess what tools they used initially to do that since open software didn’t exist yet. Your mind is about to be blown.
Wow, that’s an incredibly stupid take. Like, the kind that you generally expect from brainwashed dumbasses that don’t even know what is the difference between a screen and a computer.
That’s scary that people would listen to a guy that completely lost his understanding of reality.
Nah, Linus’s entire point is that LLMs are just a tool people use to build things, and drawing some arbitrary line between the tools you’re used to and ones you’re not is idiotic.
That’s not really beast mode. That’s a guy with a god complex not understanding the problem after refusing to acknowledge he’s not the only one who cares about Linux for the past twenty years.
the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools.
You know who else isn’t shying away from the new tools? Trump and his cronies. Like this argument means literally nothing. People like Peter Thiel have said they want the world to end, these are the lines of people not shying away from the tools that Torvalds is aligning himself with.
Dude needs to fuck off and stop being a single point of failure.
You know who else isn’t shying away from the new tools? Trump and his cronies.
Hard to think of a poorer argument against AI use.
In line with the rest of the comments here so far where there’s lots of anti AI rage but little to no coherent arguments that specify how Linus using AI to code is a bad thing. No specifics, lots of vague beating around the bush, highly emotive language.
My point wasn’t to lay out every argument against using LLMs. That’s been done ad nauseum elsewhere (not this comment thread no but other communities).
My point was his supposed beast mode was a poor argument for them by pointing out the exact same argument works both ways. Both smart people and dumb people are using them.
What the fuck are you on about?
There is so much myopia here from you it’s not even funny.
These tools are not going to go away.
This is like saying Peter Thiel uses Javascript
Linus going beastmmode
"
Linus Torvalds responded with an emphatic rejection of tool usage declarations.
He wrote:
What you are about is something entirely different. It has nothing to do with “expectations”, and it has everything to do with your hangups.
I don’t understand this whole idiotic concept of “don’t use AI for X”.
Here’s a new rule just for you: don’t use compilers for any of your kernel submissions.
Because if you can’t show that you really understand what the machine is actually doing by writing your code in assembler, then I don’t want to see your code contribution. You clearly aren’t competent if you can’t write it that way.
And btw, you had better not use an editor to write that commit message either.
Because I need you to show me that you can actually write a good commit message without using tools that make it easy to backspace and hide the mistakes you made while typing.
Ok?
Because otherwise those tool-assisted commits of yours clearly aren’t showing that you know what you are doing.
Do you not see how UTTERLY STUPID those kinds of rules would be?
So no. We’re not going to make stupid rules that say “you can’t use tools for X”.
The kind of expectations I have is that people do their best and I expect people to understand what they are doing.
But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use.
And quite honestly, in my experience, the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools. ®
"
The open source software movement was very much founded on the idea of being concerned about what kinds of tools we use as a society. Software that’s “just a tool” can lock you down and out of what you can do with it. Same argument can just as well be made that people were “shying away from using new and interesting tools” by running free software instead of Microsoft’s new priority stuff that locks you in
AI similarly gives massive control to a handful of companies. They have already used that leverage to intentionally sandbag tasks without telling you, when they think it’s against their economic interests (model distillation and AI research). Is it not possible to imagine that goes further, they would use that leverage to slip in backdoor, not report classes of bugs, etc.?
Do explain how open models like Qwen that you can run locally give massive control to handful of companies. In fact, what seems obvious is that using and improving these models is precisely what takes control away from these companies. People who started the free software movement didn’t cry like a bunch children about how much they hated software. They had the brains to understand the problem wasn’t the software itself, but rather who controls it. So, they went out and built open versions of the software that weren’t corporate owned. And try guess what tools they used initially to do that since open software didn’t exist yet. Your mind is about to be blown.
Wow, that’s an incredibly stupid take. Like, the kind that you generally expect from brainwashed dumbasses that don’t even know what is the difference between a screen and a computer.
That’s scary that people would listen to a guy that completely lost his understanding of reality.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid” - your brain on idealism
“Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid” - your brain on slop machines
Like that’s Linus’s entire point. “I’m smart, you’re dumb. Fall in line”. Not great
Nah, Linus’s entire point is that LLMs are just a tool people use to build things, and drawing some arbitrary line between the tools you’re used to and ones you’re not is idiotic.
based linus
That’s not really beast mode. That’s a guy with a god complex not understanding the problem after refusing to acknowledge he’s not the only one who cares about Linux for the past twenty years.
You know who else isn’t shying away from the new tools? Trump and his cronies. Like this argument means literally nothing. People like Peter Thiel have said they want the world to end, these are the lines of people not shying away from the tools that Torvalds is aligning himself with.
Dude needs to fuck off and stop being a single point of failure.
Hard to think of a poorer argument against AI use.
In line with the rest of the comments here so far where there’s lots of anti AI rage but little to no coherent arguments that specify how Linus using AI to code is a bad thing. No specifics, lots of vague beating around the bush, highly emotive language.
My point wasn’t to lay out every argument against using LLMs. That’s been done ad nauseum elsewhere (not this comment thread no but other communities).
My point was his supposed beast mode was a poor argument for them by pointing out the exact same argument works both ways. Both smart people and dumb people are using them.
This is not the gotcha you seem to think it is…
Ahhhhh fuck bro. I didn’t know trump used AI. Does he use computers too? I already stopped using a phone and diapers because I saw him using them.
Ahhhh fuck bro. I’m sorry you’re too busy meming to comprehend a point.
What the fuck are you on about? There is so much myopia here from you it’s not even funny. These tools are not going to go away. This is like saying Peter Thiel uses Javascript
If you think I’m arguing here that they’re gonna go away then please, please, please, go take a reading comprehension class.
I’m arguing Linus’s point that smart people use LLMs is a piss take that shows zero understanding of the world around him. That’s it.
I just also happen to wish LLMs would go away for moral and ecological reasons.
That itself is a piss take from you. What projects have you used LLM’s in for code assist activities (and I’m not talking vibecode slop)?