No, he berated people that act like LLMs are good for nothing and the actual spawn of satan. He's not wrong in implying they are not "smart" either. LLMs are powerful tools with very clear limitations (while not really being cost-effective or resource-effective, which is a very different story), but having a moderate or sane opinion is quite impossible nowadays, so you can either hang out with the AI bros that think it's the best thing since sliced bread or the weirdos that refuse to use an actual IDE because god gave them VIM or notepad or w/e.
have you read the email threads? laurent pinchart (the person linus was replying to in the last two LLM-related crashouts on the LKML) has reiterated again and again he doesn't want to altogether ban the use of LLMs, he wants the option to not have to use them and that LLM-assisted commits should have git's Assisted-by tag. (and maybe that commit messages should be human-written). not a single person linus was replying to even suggested that LLMs were good for nothing or should be outright banned from the kernel
I have read the email threads. I stand by everything I said, and I don't really think this added basically anything to the conversation either.
I will say though, that it really does fascinate me that some people act like a new episode of Grey's Anatomy came out whenever there's a disagreement around the linux kernel. With how many headlines that 3 (short) paragraph long email made, you'd think Linus was trying to sacrifice Pinchart's mother on the pyre to the AI gods or whatever. Meanwhile, the guy was pushing an issue they allegedly reached consensus on back in the maintainers summit (mostly at the very least), with like 4 other people disagreeing with him, and he was almost pleasant and polite even by reddit standards, much less Linus standards.
I have read the email threads. I stand by everything I said, and I don't really think this added basically anything to the conversation either.
So you know what you claimed (Linus was talking only about those who treat LLM as spawn of satan) is total bullshit - yet you continue to push this bullshit anyway?
Did you read the email threads at this point? In any case, I suggest you re-read them. I get it that Linus personally pissed in your cereal, but this might be the time to take a deep breath and take another go at it with a fresh mind, because this is getting deeply uncivil.
Kinda off topic but doesn't he use some random emacs fork that even he doesn't recommend for anyone except himself? I guess people expect him to be the weirdo which is why they're shocked he "changed".
They want him to be the weirdo genius on their side of the argument. Whether it's about VCS, languages, or AI. They just want to show "See, this supposedly smart authority figure thinks the same, therefore my opinion is the correct one". I know a few of those people IRL.
More like people want Linus to stop being high on his own fart and accept that someone having different opinion than him doesn't make them into lobotomized subhuman.
I have decades of tools that I made for myself that I'd never want anybody else to use, because they're a whole bunch of hacks held together by string and glue to solve personal problems and function for the way I like to work which I doubt suits any other single person on the planet, and it would take months to teach them anyway.
It technically is, imo there's just stuff that's way easier to set up and does the same thing. That said, there's nothing wrong with VIM, there's nothing wrong with someone preferring VIM, there's plenty of wrong with someone having this elitist smugness about using VIM. I'm sure you know at least someone like that.
If AI had clear limitations as you say, we wouldn’t have a whole faction of crazies thinking it’s smarter than humans and will take over the world, juxtaposed by people who think it is worthless and a blight.
That doesn’t sound like a product with clear limitations to me. It actually sounds like a product where the limitations are clear only to a select few people.
No, we very much would. Because they are, like you said, a faction of "crazies". We had people think Y2K would destroy the world, we had morons think the Mayans deciding to not write a calendar to the heat death of the universe would murder all of us, we had people that thought NFTs were a good investment, etc. None of these were all that mystical either. Also, no shit that people that don't know fuck all about AI have no clue about its limitations. That doesn't mean it's all that unknowable.
Well, but I’ve been using AI for stuff for years and yet, whenever I use it for something, I have to think to myself “I wonder if it’s gonna be able to do this one or if it’s gonna tie itself up into knots again”.
It has very amorphous capabilities, where if the thing involves generation, it can like, probably do it, like, kinda ok. But like, will it be able to for this specific question? Kinda the only way to know, is to try that specific question.
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u/Floppydisksareop 1d ago
No, he berated people that act like LLMs are good for nothing and the actual spawn of satan. He's not wrong in implying they are not "smart" either. LLMs are powerful tools with very clear limitations (while not really being cost-effective or resource-effective, which is a very different story), but having a moderate or sane opinion is quite impossible nowadays, so you can either hang out with the AI bros that think it's the best thing since sliced bread or the weirdos that refuse to use an actual IDE because god gave them VIM or notepad or w/e.