The Linux kernel isn't the only community dealing with the fallout of undisclosed AI assistance. Over in the gaming sphere, the legendary ( and still quite-alive ) Doom modding community was cleaved in two last year as Christoph "Graf Zahl" Oelckers, the longtime lead developer of the mega-popular GZDoom source port, was caught using undisclosed AI-generated patches. When community members called him out on the lack of transparency, Oelckers took a remarkably cavalier attitude, essentially telling his critics to "feel free to fork the project." The community called his bluff, resulting in the birth of the new UZDoom source port as the overwhelming majority of contributors to GZDoom fled to the new fork.
The GZDoom incident and the Sasha Levin backlash highlight exactly why the Linux kernel's new policy is so vital. Most of the developer community is less angry about the use of AI and more frustrated about the dishonesty surrounding it. By demanding an Assisted-by tag and enforcing strict human liability , the Linux kernel is attempting to strip the emotion out of the debate. Torvalds and the maintainers are acknowledging reality: developers are going to use AI tools to code faster, and trying to ban them is like trying to ban a specific brand of keyboard.
The bottom line is, if the code is good, then it's good. If it's hallucinatory AI slop that breaks the kernel, the human who clicked "submit" is the one who will have to answer to Linus Torvalds. In the open-source world, that's about as strong a deterrent as you can get.
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Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-20/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Zak Killian Contributor Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything.
bit_user The title said: … says yes to Copilot … Where in the article does it say that?? The only mention of CoPilot is where it talks about LLM-generated code having unverifiable provenance. Reply
Math Geek i think the "yes to copilot" is in reference to using it as a tool to help write code. could be clearer for sure, but i believe that's the reference made. the article does sum it up well though. overall, it's probably the best policy they can come up with. banning something and having no way to enforce it, would be rather pointless. but holding the human accountable for what they submit is a solid way to address it. use tools available to you, but in the end make sure what you create actually works and is secure. Reply
bit_user Math Geek said: i think the "yes to copilot" is in reference to using it as a tool to help write code. could be clearer for sure, but i believe that's the reference made. If the author was simply using Copilot as a proxy for all LLMs, that's lazy and misleading. Or, perhaps simply ignorant – however, the rest of the article seems knowledgeable enough that I doubt this explanation. Reply
Math Geek oh yah, it is rather misleading. i don't think we're far enough into the AI world for one brand to get the nod as a generic catch all. took a while for klee-nex, band-aid and others to get that ability. not there yet for AI world. think i'd title it "Linux developers say AI tools ok, but the submitter will be held accountable for any and all AI slop submitted." mainly due to my love of the phrase AI slop 🙂 Reply
bit_user Math Geek said: think i'd title it "Linux developers say AI tools ok, but the submitter will be help accountable for any and all AI slop submitted." mainly due to my love of the phrase AI slop 🙂 I'd go with: "Linux maintainers to allow clanker-assisted submissions, but developers will take the fall for any errors and no AI slop". mainly due to my love of the term "clankers". : D Reply
bill001g How do they think they can hold the human responsible on something they are not being paid for. They get a ban on being able to submit code? That will not fix the mess they made and someone else had to fix or at least discover. The only place I have seen the human held responsible for the AI mess up are the handful of lawyers who have gotten they law license suspended. These guys will have no income for some period of time and even if they regain their license there are many judges and lawyers who will remember and be suspect of anything the submit. Reply
USAFRet bill001g said: How do they think they can hold the human responsible on something they are not being paid for. They get a ban on being able to submit code? That will not fix the mess they made and someone else had to fix or at least discover. The only place I have seen the human held responsible for the AI mess up are the handful of lawyers who have gotten they law license suspended. These guys will have no income for some period of time and even if they regain their license there are many judges and lawyers who will remember and be suspect of anything the submit. Well, yes. That person being banned. It happens all over. And not everything submitted makes it to the actual codebase and release. Reply
Math Geek i assume there is some kind of peer review process and vetting before anything submitted is used. obviously i am not part of it nor have any first hand knowledge. we are not talking about niche distros here but the actual underlying kernal and such for the OS. just based on how often it happens, it seems MS spends very little time vetting anything, hence all the update issues for windows. but we don't see very many problems on the linux side like that. so i assume everything is gone over rather well before going live. Reply
bit_user bill001g said: How do they think they can hold the human responsible on something they are not being paid for. Most Linux Kernel patch submissions are from full-time employees paid by their employer to work on the Linux Kernel. Most are either from hardware companies, big cloud providers, or Linux distro vendors. There are also some academics and an assortment of others, but the vast majority of patches come from the full-timers. The mechanisms of holding them responsible include: Rejecting their patch submissions. De-prioritizing future patch submissions. Banning from the mailing list (where patches are submitted). Reply
palladin9479 bill001g said: How do they think they can hold the human responsible on something they are not being paid for. They get a ban on being able to submit code? That will not fix the mess they made and someone else had to fix or at least discover. The only place I have seen the human held responsible for the AI mess up are the handful of lawyers who have gotten they law license suspended. These guys will have no income for some period of time and even if they regain their license there are many judges and lawyers who will remember and be suspect of anything the submit. It's simple, you remove them from the project and revert any code submissions they made erroneously. SCM makes this trivial to do since all code submissions are tagged and tracked by individual contributor. Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-lays-down-the-law-on-ai-generated-code-yes-to-copilot-no-to-ai-slop-and-humans-take-the-fall-for-mistakes-after-months-of-fierce-debate-torvalds-and-maintainers-come-to-an-agreement#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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