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Official Linux position on LLM usage in kernel development
(lore.kernel.org)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2026
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Only if you don't care about your own cognitive decline, property theft, and climate damage
the destruction of the consumer electronics market ...
This is like saying you should dig with bare hands even though drilling machines have been invented.
I feel like people parroting these tropes uncritically are the ones who should be worried about their own cognitive decline.
Are we wrong tho, and why?
The energy consumption trope in particular hasn't been true for a while now. You can literally run models on your laptop for most tasks, and these are models that have capability that needed a data centre literally less than a year go. Meanwhile, the whole notion of people offloading their cognitive capacity to models is based on a handful of studies with tiny samples. So yes, you are wrong, and you just run around uncritically repeating nonsense thinking you're being really profound.
So we can stop building new AI datacenters? :D
I mean that's already happening. Less than half of the proposed ones is being built, and once the bubble pops I don't think even the ones that are currently being started will get finished.
Glad to read some good news this morning.
Such a strong science backed rebuttal.
I'm gonna go rethink my entire life now.
Being aware of the numerous massive lawsuits currently being levied against AI companies for their theft, reading research papers on cognitive decline in AI users, and being aware of where the majority of energy in the US comes from, especially for new AI datacenters, really does have a cognitive impact, but it isn't decline.
As strong a rebuttal as a parrot requires. I also love how you lump together a whole bunch of issues inherent in capitalism in your complaint further illustrating that you're not able to put together a coherent argument.
Programmers already spend about as-much of their time, if not more, reading other's code as they do writing their own. It doesn't mater if that "other's code" is AI generated or not.
There's an argument to be made about excessive vs not-enough commenting, but that's not where you went, and its clear you have negligible programming experience, or creative experience for that matter, to be coming after the concept of sharing code like-so.
One wonders how many books you've read, to be pretending that reading a book without paying for it, even borrowing from a library, is theft. Stick with the environmental costs arguments - its what you are personally suited to argue, and far more urgent than the rest.
And how is this an argument in favor of AI code? If 5-10 percent of you job used to be writing code and now you dropped it by half, that's not very effective of optimization. Especially if the code you now have to review takes more time to review due to it being generated by AI.
As someone with several years of experience as a programmer: fuck off with this elitist nonsense
Why would you let keeping-up with AI code cut-into the amount of time you spend writting code? Your conflating Torvalds being okay with/allowing programmers using a tool PROPERLY with Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft and their ilk shoving it down everyone's throats, proper usage be damned.
Lol. Way to show how little you know. I swear AI bros get the most butt hurt over provable stuff.
I've stated my experience elsewhere but I'm a senior software engineer, 20 something years of experience. I have actually created a neural network from the ground up for a previous company. But sure, go off about how little experience I have.
So you helped create the problem, only so you could show it to be a problem, then turn around and sell us the solution, eh?
Between the two of us, you are literally the AI bro. Eating your own shit and calling it gourmet. I've stayed the fuck away from the software industry, let-alone AI, my entire life because I grew-up with and around would-be authoritative rent-seekers like you.
20 something years of software-industry experience is still mostly copying/rehashing the work of those who came before - you didn't create shit, just re-packaged it in a way your company could sell.
The ground-up? Gotta go a lot further back than 20 years to claim that. Your name's not on the patents or textbooks, so by your arguments, you've stolen every bit of it you ever consumed and then turned-around and applied, and since you didn't invent it yourself you can't even really understand it.
Again, that's your argument because you can't concieve of the idea that something you "created" off the work of those who came before you could ever approach the understanding you must claim certainty of to speak with such authority.
One of us wants to turn off the money-printing machine because its un-sustainable. You, however would rather focus on the insanity that is Intellectual Property Rights. Our taxes paid for all of that shit.
I pay authors, artists, musicians, and yes, I buy software, even knockoff stuff when its less enshittified than the original has become. I'll bet you're more afraid of AI realizing the burden en-shittification creates than you are even slightly concerned about anyone going un-paid for original code.
That sounds like Socrates' argument that writing would weaken people’s memories.
And absolutely, people will probably forget the syntax by heart if they don't type it as frequently. Personally, knowing syntax is not very valuable to me, as it's just a means to an end. And whether that leads to cognitive decline or not, is really up to who's using the tool.
Saying it leads to cognitive decline is saying you can't use an LLM and have critical thinking, which I can't agree with.
That's not me saying it. MIT, Harvard, and others have released numerous studies that show using LLMs does exactly that, reduce critical thinking. You can disagree all you want but until you do the science you're disagreeing with a growing body of actual experts.
Are those studies in the context of software development? What are the tasks at hand? Do they evaluate critical thinking on matters that people actually care about or on chores? Were they instructed to use LLMs in a particular way that is equivalent to their personal preference?
You can't pull a wildcard saying something like that because it's too broad of a conclusion.
This is where you go look at any of the studies and start figuring out for yourself.
They've been looking at it in several contexts including software development, general problem solving, reading comprehension, writing ability, and more.
In some they were instructed to use LLMs certain ways, in others they weren't. That's the neat thing about so many studies being done is they've used a wide set of methodologies.
well, you didn't link any and you're the one generalizing it, so the proof is on you to provide. I doubt their conclusions are like you're making them sound.
I didn't link any because the internet exists. Spend literally five seconds on google.
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646
Their conclusions are right in the abstract in black and white terms. And this is just a teeny tiny sample of the papers that exist all saying the same thing.
Yeah, they never are. Scientific conclusions are generally a lot more nuanced and cautious than what this guy's claiming. He only read headlines.
Firmly agree. I spent 6 years coding in python as a daily language, then I swapped to using nodejs for 10 years, only using python on and off. I went to make a basic script with python the other day and I had to look up how to convert a set over to a list.
If you don't use it, you lose it is fully valid.
Not true. You came into the problem knowing:
That’s the thoughts of a good engineer. You don’t think in code and you shouldn’t have to. Loosing your memory on the particular syntax is hardly an issue. You’ll still churn out a small program in under a day. You need to remember that people who really don’t know how to code take months for a product half as good.
Why should anyone seriously concern themselves with memorizing all the syntaxes? That’s like memorizing all the dates in History class. It takes so much bandwidth away from other concerns with higher payout. Go learn some architecture, some risk management, stuff like that.
Socrates didn't have access to modern science. This shit rots your brain.
You're the proof that it's true.
Sorry. :D
Don't be sorry, that poster walked right into it. Have you met anybody who actually checks code before just putting on production servers? Maybe, but the shareholders need moar monies guy. Proof-reading code is so 2010's.