No, the kernel has not gone "Full AI Slop Code"

2 days ago by auzy1 to c/linux

There appears to be a few bad actors in the Lemmy community spreading ragebait for personal gain

In fact, the same mechanisms added at the beginning to catch bad human written code are the exact same that catch bad AI code

No, the Linux kernel won't use AI to auto approve code for inclusion. And no plans to do so
The Kernel actually has a huge number of maintainers. As part of the process, all patches are reviewed by a human who provide feedback as part of the process, and patches get bounced back and forth multiple time.
Patches don't just magically go straight to master. The maintainers generally have their own branches where it goes to, then it goes to staging trees like Linux-Next. It goes through many eyes, and many tests by the end. The idea that AI code is overrunning the kernel is rediculous
Maintainers also check that the code meets coding guidelines and is written properly, and solves the problem they are trying to solve. Yes, they also ensure the code isn't slop
LLM's though might be used to identify obvious problems (bugs / coding guideline issues) with the code. These don't generate "slop" just find issues
The only thing that matters is the human who submitted the code, as they should be checking the code submitted anyway (including LLM generated code).

Writing bad code isn't something new, and isn't unique to LLM's. Coders (and it seems some "journalists") have been writing slop since computers were invented.

The process hasn't gotten less stringent (probably even MORE stringent as there is an additional set of robotic eyes that can also check), and the same mechanisms that were put in place to catch badly written code 10 years ago, are still there now

bjc 21 points 2 days ago

i'm worried about the direction linux is going, and i am particularly worried about linus himself.

that said, the pivot to ai guy gets his bread buttered by being anti-ai. a number of people on the fediverse maintain their followings in part by constant, vociferous ai bashing.

i also hate ai! i think it's dangerous and one of the worst things humanity has yet created!

but i can read the mailing list, i can look at the patch, and this is so overblown it's nuts. nothing about what went on with this patch matches the descriptions people are giving it. someone even pulled a "i don't understand the rcu that well" quote in order to make their point, but that quote isn't from anyone really involved in the patch at all. it's just cherry picking a loosely-related message in order to have something to scream at.

and, i hate to say it, but this is pretty common with dave and his crew of hangers-on.

it frustrates me to no end that the people who are most visible in the anti-ai camp are people like this, because it undermines everything when it's so trivial to point out how they're blowing things up way out of proportion in order to maintain their rage machine

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auzy1 12 points 2 days ago

I wasn't going to name names.. lol.

I think part of the problem though, is it's like vaccination, where people have jumped online with no actual knowledge and isolate themselves in online communities where they ban anyone who isn't on their side.

There was a comment here which spoke about the recent "Racing Condition", which is further evidence they aren't a dev (devs have been writing "race conditions" since the kernel started)

But, in practice, Linus has no choice here realistically I feel. It's a huge competitive disadvantage and a security issue NOT to be using it.

It does suck.. And I look forward to AI companies HOPEFULLY getting taxed into oblivion

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Seralth -6 points 2 days ago

I've been saying this a lot recently but, AI is like a hammer.

Any idiot can swing a hammer. Not every idiot can build a house.

Ai is the same, it can be used crudely and cause problems, or with care and thought and be used to create something functional and reliable.

The entire concept of hating ai is fundamentally retarded.

Hating the corpos and people abusing it makes sense. They are the ones causing environmental damage, they are the ones stealing and causing legal issues, they are the ones lying.

Ai in and if it self. Is sitting there doing nothing. Because it's a fucking tool. Nothing more or less.

Ai can't hurt you. Ai can't fucking do anything because it's not alive. It has no will or wants or agenda.

Yet people all over the Internet and lemmy is really bad about this. Seems so far up their own asses on the hate train they forgot a tool can't do anything without a person using it.

Ai companies are a bane and a pox on society and need to be taxed into oblivion, shut down, and the ceos likely jailed.

But the people aren't the tool.

Judge people by their actions. Stop judging a fucking tool like it's a person.

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Croquette 12 points 2 days ago

The entire concept of hating ai is fundamentally retarded.

Hating LLMs because of how it is made and the resources it takes isn't retarded. Companies are literally stealing work of millions of people with no consequences at all and the environmental cost is added on top of that so that Uncle Fuckface can generate an image of himself as a vampire or next to Abraham Lincoln.

I work with a client that has a full engineering team and they outsourced their project to us because they didn't have the bandwidth and pretty much every response we receive is a AI generated email or document for a design they provided themselves that they don't understand. When challenged about their design, I get met with deer in the headlights stare because they don't know what they gave us.

There are many reason to legitimately hate LLMs

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Swedneck 1 point 3 hours ago

cool slur

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BeelzebubEiNukuKoskaan 2 points 2 days ago

but that quote isn’t from anyone really involved in the patch at all.

Reminds me of the recent panic about KDE becoming a AI Desktop Environment. Blog posts were written, news articles were made and posted to Lemmy, people were outraged.

... Turns out, it was just some random dude who made a "hey someone should make a AI version of KDE"-post on a forum.

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kuberoot 2 points 2 days ago

I don't know about the specific drama you're talking about, but I had the impression somebody did a presentation on some event presenting a "vision of an AI-friendly KDE" or something, that at first glance looked like it was being presented by KDE.

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BeelzebubEiNukuKoskaan 0 points 2 days ago

I may be mistaken, but I think both the forum post and the presentation were sources of pearl clutching by the community. Neither of which were in anyway official KDE things nor endorsed by KDE, other than the presentation being held in some sort of KDE(?) event.

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kuberoot 3 points a day ago

Yup, that would match up with what little I've seen. I think a presentation is orders of magnitude more prominent than a forum post, so it's much more understandable to me.

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Seralth 1 point 2 days ago

Nothing brings people together like hate.

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Quazatron 4 points 2 days ago

I think they call it "engagement" these days, but it still feels like enragement to me.

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db0 -1 points 2 days ago

That is David's modus operanti for years now and he and hid crew routinely bash Foss projects and communities based on exaggerations and hearsay. These are people who will deliberately choose to disbelieve what people who know more tell them, just so that they can remain upset. I'm Speaking from multiple run-ins with them.

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bjc 1 point 2 days ago

"pivot to ai" is the first i've heard of him. if you have examples of this behavior in other contexts, i'd love to have a look at it.

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db0 0 points a day ago

I don't maintain a pastebin or something. You can look at why he defederated lemmy.dbzer0.com if you want.

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JTode 11 points 2 days ago

If you were around when Debian adopted Systemd, you will recognize this mass hysteria among those who do not code or maintain.

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lka1988 3 points a day ago

Good god.

Systemd is an absolute godsend for people like me.

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Toga77 7 points 2 days ago

I like how we keep trusting humans to not take shortcuts.

You know humans, the most legendarily lazy, shortcut taking, lying ass fuckin species.

Come on.

The kernel isn't slop yet. I'll let real life experience tell me what's more likely.

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lka1988 -2 points a day ago

The Linux kernel has existed for 30+ years. It's not getting slopified any time soon.

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uzername 7 points 2 days ago

spreading ragebait for personal gain

Define "personal gain"

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lka1988 3 points a day ago

Destroying trust in the Linux kernel, for one.

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one_knight_scripting 1 point 11 hours ago

Yeah, bad actors like @Shin@piefed.social with his utter nonsense post: Linus and Linux as a Political Tool.

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Shin 1 point 4 hours ago

Hey thanks for the extra engagement. But you clearly haven't read the blog, which is beyond stupid when linking to another topic.

This is a quote from the blog regarding my respects for the maintainers. And I deeply respect then.

[...] We are talking about smart people with a genuine passion for hardware and enough time to learn a genuinely hard language. [...]

So @one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world if you have EVER read the blog you would know my respect for the project. Stop spreading missinformation.

I NEVER said that the problem was on the LLM usage, on the contrary, my focus is on the other part of the statement. Another quote from the blog, regarding the phrase used.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it. [...]
Then he says this…

Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that’s a side benefit, not the point of the project.

This is NOT some kind of “social warrior” project, never has been, and never will be.1

The first quote is a tantrum. The second one is the problem, and it’s bigger than he seems to realize.

[...]

The vibe coder panic is a distraction. The real trouble is the other half of the sentence

I highlighted the part that bothered me enough to write about it, since you probably need help to understand words in a blog @one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world

So stop the missinformation. Want to attack me, feel free. Do it, I couldn't care less. But spreading wrong or missinformation, this is the point were I think a community can't accept.

Have a nice day, and thanks for the extra link for the blog, helps with the engagement.

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auzy1 0 points 8 hours ago

I was actually thinking Pivot To AI, who seems to maintain a shitty blog, patreon (of course) and even a Lemmy community (where you seemingly get banned without debate if you disagree with them.. And then abused after you can banned). Rather than doing any actual programming it looks like, they just write articles attacking programmers.

That's actually why I wrote this, as I felt there was no right of reply, and I suspect he was knowingly providing deceptive information for personal gain, financial gain and attention. At the very least, banning someone, and then abusing them after they can't comment/respond is so childish lol

The implication he seemed to be making too (or that his readers seemed to gather it seems), was that the recent changes would mean that kernel code potentially goes straight through AI to the kernel.. And that is a blatant lie that has deviated so far from the truth. There was seemingly no attempt in that article (the parts I read) on educating how the process works

There are so many completely valid arguments that could be made against AI, so, it's completely unnecessary to deceive and bullshit people

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CovfefeKills -7 points 2 days ago

Lol let there be no mistake about who exactly these bad actors are

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Routhinator -10 points 2 days ago

Linus just yeeted a slop bomb before going on vacation. This is the definition of slop. LLMs have no business near the kernel code or being used at all.

https://tech.lgbt/...

https://lwn.net/...

https://lwn.net/...

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NoLemurs 48 points 2 days ago

So... your evidence for slop is that he made a patch, they caught an issue in the review process, and then he had to go on vacation so he asked another maintainer to take over to get the change done correctly in the merge window?

How is that not the process working exactly as intended?

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wesker 25 points 2 days ago

People really be thinking every fully human-rolled PR is gonna be flawless, yet the influx of fresh CVEs is higher than it's ever been right now, because LLMs are busy poking holes in existing human code.

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auzy1 16 points 2 days ago

Exactly this.

I've been doing code review on some of our code from 10+ years ago and I'm surprised by how many major bugs I'm STILL finding (different ones between Claude and ChatGPT). And this is code that's been in prod for years, and in heavy usage.

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9tr6gyp3 5 points 2 days ago

Yeah but
humanSlop = good.
aiSlop = bad.

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pglpm -5 points 2 days ago

I think we need a redefinition of "bug" though. If something hasn't been noticed for 10+ years, is it really a "bug"? I think the definition should depend on the probability of negative effects, not just on the possibility.

In fact, my impression is that any piece of code can be shown to have some bug, if taken from a particular angle or in particular contexts or scenarios.

(I think there are also connections with mathematical-logical foundations. For example, it is impossible to build an axiomatic system that is enough powerful and does not have undecidable propositions. Whenever you fix the axioms to fix one of the undecidable propositions, another one automatically pops up.)

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HappyFrog 5 points a day ago

Nonono, you must understand, every patch Linus made before using AI was flawless and required no review at all.

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auzy1 15 points 2 days ago

From my understanding, that was a patch series that was still under development, and NOT in the kernel. And, it was caught in Code reviews.

Code reviews are normal, and stuff like this is NORMAL, and has been well before AI. Are you seriously claiming the kernel never received buggy patch sets (in staging / non-master trees) in the past?

Also, it is interesting that the same 3 links seem to be posted everywhere blindly. Did you even read what I wrote in my post?

Do you mind explaining the technical reasons why the patch is "slop"? Or, did you just see the LLM part and think "this is gonna be great pitchfork material and I'll pretend like I actually understand whats going on"

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urushitan 9 points 2 days ago

Yeah lol also reading through the actually interaction around the patch

> The uptodate check in filemap_read_rcu_can_copy() has to stay, though.
> The flag only says the folio was uptodate when it was marked. Some
> filesystems clear PG_uptodate on a folio that stays in the page cache,
> and that can happen after the folio got the flag.

Those filesystems are buggy.  We have assertions that the uptodate flag
is set on folios mapped into userspace, and filesystems going arund
clearing the uptodate bit will cause problems.  It's something I'm
working on removing, but since it's all connected to writeback errors,
it takes a lot of arguing with each filesystem maintainer.

So one of the reasons there’s so many changes in the patch series is to account for… human bugs

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auzy1 3 points 2 days ago

Was actually going to mention that.

There are also ambiguities in specifications too.

Like one of our libraries is a websocket/http server I developed, that has been working fine for years. However recently, a system broke, and we actually discovered it's because there are even small ambiguities in http areas too that we need to accomodate, and I couldn't find anything in the specs that explicitly prevented it either.

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Rhaedas 0 points 2 days ago

Dependencies, dependencies everywhere! https://xkcd.com/2347/

(well, maybe not exactly right, but similar problem.)

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AwesomeLowlander 8 points 2 days ago

Your accusation is the definition of slop. Sounds convincing, asserts to have sources, turns out there's nothing of substance.

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corsicanguppy 8 points 2 days ago

LLMs have no business near the kernel code or being used at all.

Cool. Let us know when your fork is packaged and I'll test it out.

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dusk -3 points 2 days ago

your ai will test it out

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corsicanguppy 4 points 2 days ago

Nope. I assisted system test back in '04 when I was doing build/rel for Unix and ent Linux, so it's no big deal: if you have a test plan I'll run it too.

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begrudgedcarfolk -11 points 2 days ago

No, the kernel has not gone "Full AI Slop Code" yet. FTFY

Though I'd argue it has since Linus introduced a racing condition with his latest slop contribution.

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auzy1 13 points 2 days ago

It's not called a Racing condition, its called a race condition (so, I already know you're probably not a dev anyway, and are just repeating info)

The kernel has always had race conditions.. A good example is: https://www.networkworld.com/... (this was decades old code)

In fact, race conditions were a big factor for dropping SysVInit.. They're even easier to do on a multi-threaded system, and become more common when optimising and multiple things are happening at once

And, the simple fact is, the development process is DESIGNED to catch them (and it did), but they are so common, that the news never reports them. If anything, AI is actually making them LESS common

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AwesomeLowlander 1 point 2 days ago

Your account is basically just ragebait about stuff you know nothing about, isn't it?

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Welcome to c/linux!

Welcome to our thriving Linux community! Whether you're a seasoned Linux enthusiast or just starting your journey, we're excited to have you here. Explore, learn, and collaborate with like-minded individuals who share a passion for open-source software and the endless possibilities it offers. Together, let's dive into the world of Linux and embrace the power of freedom, customization, and innovation. Enjoy your stay and feel free to join the vibrant discussions that await you!

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Welcome to c/linux!

Welcome to our thriving Linux community! Whether you're a seasoned Linux enthusiast or just starting your journey, we're excited to have you here. Explore, learn, and collaborate with like-minded individuals who share a passion for open-source software and the endless possibilities it offers. Together, let's dive into the world of Linux and embrace the power of freedom, customization, and innovation. Enjoy your stay and feel free to join the vibrant discussions that await you!

Rules:

Stay on topic: Posts and discussions should be related to Linux, open source software, and related technologies.
Be respectful: Treat fellow community members with respect and courtesy.
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