Hey there, buddy. Do you know why I

pulled you over? Undisclosed use of AI

while coding. Yeah, that's an actionable

offense you need to site when you use an

LLM. Okay, Buster. If you continue this,

we're going to throw you clean out of

the city. Okay. Yes. This is my mason

jar creeping into the the camera angle.

Is it a hot cup of pee? Yes, it is. Now,

you're probably thinking, "Okay, what

the heck are you even talking about? Why

are we talking about needing to publicly

uh announce that you're using an AI?

Well, the reason why we're talking about

it is that the Linux development team

and Lionus himself has finally come to a

conclusion of how LLMs can be used

within the Linux kernel development. And

for the last 6 months, there has been a

bit of a raging war. Okay, there's a

France Fertan involved that kicked off

the entire thing. And there's lots of

angry and sweaty nerds in the comments.

So to kick this thing off, I think it

would be best if we just looked over the

code in which kicked off this entire

thing. It's only a little 19line change

in which there's a replacement of this

old hash table that used to be used, but

instead there's now this new define

hasht function. Instead of saying how

big it is numerically, you say it as a

power of two. 2 to the 7 128. So you

say, "Hey, I only need seven bits."

Instead of creating a key by doing a

little bit of masking operations,

instead you just simply get to use some

of the more convenient functions. Same

thing with adding. Deleting is virtually

the exact same. So, even me as a layman

looking at this code, this looks rather

reasonable, right? But if you zoom in,

no, we're talking about zooming in.

Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no. You're not

listening to me. I want you to get in

it, baby. Do you see that read mostly?

Do you see how that read mostly was

removed? Well, a bunch of the reviewers

didn't really catch that. I assume they

thought that the define hasht uses read

mostly. Oh, but it didn't. And this

caused a performance regression. Now,

performance regressions. Oopsy daisies.

Changing of interfaces, usually not a

big deal. This is just kind of part and

parcel for developing any large

sophisticated piece of software. But

there were several people that got quite

hot and bothered. We're talking about

frothing here, okay? They were out there

just yelling, pulling a Jerry Maguire,

just throwing his briefcase everywhere.

And the thing is is that the performance

regression and the patch actually really

didn't cause any problems. Yeah, people

had to fix some stuff, but no one was

really upset. What actually caused the

whole thing was this article right here

on June 26, 2025, which is talking about

supporting kernel development with large

language models. And this was actually

just recapping a talk in 2025 from the

open-source summit given by Sasha Leven.

In this talk, he kind of talks about how

he's utilizing LLMs for kernel

development. In one of the examples, he

points to that patch I just got done

showing you that was merged in 6.15. But

here's the thing is that when the

Colonel developers inevitably found this

just a short bit later, they said, "Hey,

wait a second. That patch he's pointing

to, I knew about that patch. I reviewed

that patch. I am baffled that he

apparently saw no need to disclose this

when he was posting the patch. Or am I

missing something in the lore links?"

And this, my friends, is how World War

AI happened. Now, there's obviously a

lot of conversation going on, going back

and forth, disputing the legal

challenges of using AI, which honestly,

I'm on their team. There is definitely

some gray area on the old copyright,

clean room engineering. Can you ever

have clean room engineering if the AI

itself likely has the copyrighted code

actually stored within its weights or

compressed within its weights? Yeah,

that's a that's a serious problem. And

that is a serious legal problem to the

point that even Microsoft Copilot comes

with the customer copyright commitment.

It's a provision in the Microsoft

product terms that describes Microsoft

obligations to defend customers against

certain third-party intellectual

property claims relating to output

content. Microsoft is stating and

willing to go to bat for its customers

using C-pilot if C-Pilot leads to

generated copyrightable and enforceable

code. But that's only part of the reason

why a lot of people were upset. A big

part of it is that if I would have known

that it was AI generated, I would have

reviewed it more strongly. I was going

to even ask Sasha if this came from some

new tool. I think I should have. And

yes, it would have been nice if Sasha

mentioned it was completely generated by

an LLM because I would have taken a

deeper look at it. It appears from the

comments below that it does indeed have

a slight bug which I WOULD HAVE CAUGHT

if I would have known this was 100%

degenerated. And this honestly to me

this is kind of like an interesting

point. I I you know what I will have to

first and foremost say that the people

developing Linux are obviously extremely

talented engineers and I think it's

completely reasonable to say that

they're likely better engineers than I

am. But this idea that you would have

reviewed it different knowing that it

was an LLM versus someone you know. I

don't know about that. Why why would you

ever feel that way? Isn't a Isn't that

the purpose of a review for you to put

on your thinking cap and to think deeply

about the code being merged such that

you make sure that it is of the quality

you would expect? And so if somebody

hands me 19 lines and it's my job to say

yes, this code is good or no, this code

is bad, I really don't care who hands it

to me. I'm going to do a review and

ultimately even me and my layman's I

would have been able to see that, hey,

these two are different. I would have

had the check. Does define hasht come

with this intrinsic flag read mostly? I

don't in fact I don't know what that

does. I just assume that what it does is

it somehow changes either implementation

or how optimizations work to the point

where reading becomes much more of an

optimize and writes become more

penalized. In other words, this is

something that's read a whole bunch. As

it says right here, read mostly, right?

It just seems pretty straightforward.

You can change data structures or you

can change optimizations to make these

things work where reading is the kind of

the expected path. And there's actually

quite a bit of this throughout this

entire uh little argument going back and

forth of the people who reviewed the

code. And it's because they signed their

name, but they missed this bug. And

yeah, the bug wasn't a big deal. Yeah,

it was fixed. But it's kind of this

weird cope that I'm seeing that yeah, I

would have reviewed harder knowing it's

an AI. I I don't I don't really

understand that. I would just assume you

review well because that's what you got

to do. And you know, I hate to be on the

side of defending anything with AI, but

this just feels like something I have

to. The outcome of after 6 months of

arguing is this document right here, AI

coding assistance, which effectively

says that, hey, if you're going to be

contributing to the Linux kernel using

an LLM, you have a couple requirements

yourself. All code must be compatible

with the licenses. And B, AI agents must

not add sign off by tags. They can only

add an assisted by tag. That means

somebody else is liable. Which honestly

is a pretty good approach. Meaning that

any line of code that hits the potential

to become merged into the kernel,

somebody has to say, "Hey, I own this

code. Hey, I fully understand it. I've

done 100% of the review and I say this

code is good." You cannot allow a

machine to say the code is good. But a

more interesting point in this argument

is actually down below in one of the

many comments that says, "At the same

time, the explicit goal of generating

code with LMS is to make every developer

more productive at writing patches,

meaning there will be more patches to

review and reviewers will be under more

pressure. And in the long term, there

will be fewer new reviewers because none

of the junior developers who outsource

their understanding of the code to an

LLM will be learning enough to take on

that role." It's actually kind of an

interesting uh proposition. And it's

definitely something I've talked about a

whole bunch, which is the value of

learning in the day and age of AI. Do

you really need to learn? Should you

really take the time to understand

everything or should you just like, yo,

Dario, take the wheel. And for me, you

know what? This is my culture, okay?

It's learning. And for a juniors out

there, when they see that and they hear

that, they're like, that that's your

culture learning. I really do have to

sympathize with this, though. right at

the very end right here says, "I think

writing code is already the easiest and

most enjoyable part of software

development." So, it seems like the

worst part is trying to be automated

away. Honestly, I can feel that so deep.

Holy cow. The most enjoyable part of the

software development practice isn't

trying to figure out what to program.

That is long. That is difficult. And it

takes a whole bunch of time to come up

with good ideas. I can tell you I have

failed. I have created so many projects

that absolutely went to the wayside.

I've created few projects that actually

were a very, you know, high amounts of

value and people ended up using a whole

bunch. But the coding part, the coding

part is and has always been the easiest

and the most enjoyable part of software

development. So, I can like I completely

sympathize with this. This has been one

of my big gripes about just reviewing

code. Reviewing code ain't fun. Nobody

likes reviewing code. And this is why

ultimately I think this little document

that's been developed, this is just a

stop gap. I don't know how long this

document can uphold, but my guess is it

won't uphold that long. Meaning that

they're going to claim the new tools are

able to review just as well as humans.

And it's going to kind of go into this

point of why can't I have agents on the

signed off tag? Hey, they're better at

code reviewing than I am. They find more

bugs than I do. And so my guess is

within one to two years this is going to

have to change because the amount of

patches coming in could very well not

explode by like double but could end up

10xing in the amount of reviewers are

simply going to be unable to get through

that code and some other thing is going

to have to happen. I somehow doubt that

Lionus is gonna allow Linux to be

sloppified, but the pressure from the

slop trebuche, it's intense. And my

suspicion is that it's only going to

grow year over year. You probably

noticed that I actually haven't said

much on whether I think you should be

able to use LLMs or not inside the

kernel. And that's because honestly, I

don't have a really good gauge. That

patch that we looked at, it was pretty

well done. Yeah, the read mostly thing

should have been caught. We could blame

the reviewers. We could blame the person

who created Sash 11 for not catching it.

But mistakes are made and it probably

would have even been not caught by an AI

as well potentially, but I'm also on the

other side of the fence, which is that I

think you should review the code you put

out there. Like I'm still on that side.

And so I don't know what it's going to

take for me to change that. And so even

if I can produce infinite amount of

code, it also means that I can't go

infinitely fast because I still have to

read it. And my guess is that Linux will

be in this kind of state for a very very

long time. And of course very long in

the day and age of technology is

somewhere between 2 to 50 years. I don't

know. Okay. The future's difficult.

That's it. That's what I wanted to yap

about. I always find the Linux, you

know, the Linux mailing list and the LWN

just very interesting. this kind of

argument that's always happening that

these are people that are deeply

concerned about code, the code craft,

the process of creating code, and kind

of their gigantic responsibility to

never be wrong. So for me, this is kind

of like a large, I guess, canary in the

coal mine for AI usage. If the kernel

can remain as consistent as it has been,

unlike all these sloppied websites, and

be able to take advantage of using AI,

then hey, you know, it's probably means

me and you need to take more looks into

it all. And and most of all like I think

the big thing to just always think about

is that at the end of the day writing

code and building things and building

kind of your ideas like this is amazing.

This is an amazing thing we get to do.

Who would have guessed in the entire

history of the world there would be

something in which millions of people

could create whatever comes to their

mind. We live in truly kind of like an

amazing day and age. So really with all

the FUD with all the kind of just

non-stop fear-mongering. Sorry, I keep

putting this. I just I just love taking

drinks. I just leave it right in the

camera shot. So, with all the

fear-mongering being done by Daario and

Sam and these hype beasts, to me, I look

at it as one of the, you know, one of

the greatest days to be writing software

and to have expertise because expertise

probably going to be needed for quite

some time. So, sorry. I know some of you

want her to G on your stack until you

produce 37,000 lines of code, but for

the rest of us, we're still just trying

to make sense of the world. Hey, the

name, it's the hopeen, okay? That's what

I want. That's what I want in life.

Also, I do think there's a big issue

with copyright and I really do hope some

people go to jail because honestly, the

fact what they did to Aaron Schwarz just

a little bit earlier, only a few years

back, but somehow all the execs and all

the researchers just stealing massive

amounts of stuff face absolutely no jail

time or consequences seems a little bit

suspicious to me. Just throwing it out

there. If we were to get to true

justice, I think jail time is in order,

at least a court hearing.

A gen again again

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