Torvalds: AI is fine for competent devs, but spare us the 'drive-by' patches

Linus Torvalds is embracing AI to write Linux kernel code, and some people are having fits. He has a message for them. So do I. Roy Schestowitz, editor of Tux Machines, summed up his reaction to the news as " Linus Torvalds Turns to Slop . " In the podcast Pivot to AI , podcaster David Gerard agreed: "Linux kernel goes full AI slop code." Meanwhile, in the Tom's Hardware comments section, commenter "LordVile" wrote: " This is a publicity stunt from his AI overlords [The Linux Foundation] who pay his wage." They followed this by saying this is the "same reason he's flipped-flopped on AI." I've known Linus for a few decades, and I don't take his use of AI as evidence that he's suddenly abandoned his standards. And the very idea that he'd do anything he didn't want to do with Linux on behalf of the Linux Foundation, or anyone else, is ludicrous. I get it, though. There are reasons to be suspicious of AI. I've written about many of them. For instance, AI model collapse , which happens when AI engines learn from other AI models and their ties to the truth fray. It's a very real problem. Not, mind you, that LLMs find the grist for their answer mills from very reliable sources in the first place. Even when AI gets good data, as it does in programming, its owners pay little to no attention to the copyrights and licenses protecting the open source code it picked up its coding tricks from. As for paying for the information it runs on, please! The very idea that Big AI must pay writers, artists, you name it, for using their work is anathema to them. All that said, when it comes to programming, the ship has sailed. AI is becoming part of the programming toolkit, whether its critics like it or not. Why? Because while you still can't vibe code your way into delivering production-quality software, when someone who knows what they're doing, like Torvalds, uses AI, it can be very useful. Anyone who says otherwise is just making the same mistake the Luddites did. Who now, some of you may ask? They were textile workers who attacked machinery in the early 19th century in protest against changes threatening their wages and livelihoods. You may have noticed that while people still weave cloth by hand, industrial production is mechanized. The same is happening now with AI and programming. I think we're about halfway through the process, and by 2030 or so, people programming by "hand" will be about as common as weavers doing it by hand are today. In short, get over it. I don't …