Linus on AI. Uhh?

I’ve said it before; I’m no programmer. One of the stalwarts for open-source has been Linus Torvalds, and he’s seen a lot of code over the decades. It’s just been disappointing hearing him speaking positively about using AI. The recent clarifications show some form of naiveness in his assumptions I find hard to agree. He tried to clarify his stance, that he didn’t mean that AI is all bad, it’s up to the judgement of the coder.

That’s a fair statement, but Linus has in the past been aggressive and harsh on those committing code to the Linux kernel, to the point that he’s known for being this particular about people doing the right thing. But somehow now, there seems to be a blanket statement that every bit of code would have been committed has been after the good judgement of the programmer.

Maybe there is something on his mind, or something he knows that we don’t, but he isn’t being very clear and open about it. It’s all just a little confusing. I guess I might be OK if Linus himself used AI with his good judgement, but I’m not sure if every Tom, Dick and Harry has the vast knowledge needed to take good calls, or understand what’s happening in the code an LLM spews out.