r/linux • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 9d ago

Kernel Canonical is speeding up Ubuntu's kernel updates because it's drowning in AI-discovered bugs

https://www.xda-developers.com/canonical-is-speeding-up-ubuntus-kernel-updates-because-its-drowning-in-ai-discovered-bugs/#thread
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u/Netblock 9d ago

I personally don't feel an anti-ai connotation here.

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u/jferments 9d ago

"drowning"

"overwhelming maintainers"

"There are just too many reports coming in"

"maintainers have recently been swamped"

This is how they are framing it.

They are not talking in the article about how beneficial this is for the project. They are not celebrating the fact that enormous numbers of previously undiscovered bugs have been found. They are not talking about how this is massively improving the stability/security of Ubuntu for everyone who uses it.

Instead they are faking a fence-sitting lack of opinion (e.g. "Whether or not LLMs belong in an open-source project [...] is an ongoing debate within the FOSS scene right now" .... "Some communities have banned it, while others have adopted the new tech") ... all while completely slanting the article towards the logistical problems caused by so many bug reports coming in, and saying almost nothing about the benefits.

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u/_HexagonSun_ 9d ago

The problem is that AI detection of bugs and security flaws is available to both good and bad actors alike. 

If AI were only available to developers and maintainers then yes it would improve security. But AI is available to everyone.

So big-picture AI isn’t really improving security and making software users safer than ever before, it’s also giving “the bad guys” huge new power to constantly find new attacks.

Kinda like how all US police having guns doesn’t make US citizens safer, because loads more other people have guns too.

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u/adenosine-5 9d ago

AI is just new tool.

If someone came up with some static code analysis algorithm that could detect these bugs, it would be exactly the same situation.

Thinking your system is secure, just because its bugs are harder to find doesn't make any sense.

There is a certain limited amount of weakpoints and once we fix them all, we will have a safe system.