Linus Torvalds on AI use in the Linux kernel

cbrake · July 15, 2026, 2:27pm

From: Linus Torvalds @ 2026-07-15 3:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Roman Gushchin
Cc: Laurent Pinchart, Mauro Carvalho Chehab, Derek Barbosa,
Matthieu Baerts, Konstantin Ryabitsev, Jason Gunthorpe,
Steven Rostedt, users, Linux Media Mailing List, Stephen Finucane

On Tue, 14 Jul 2026 at 19:01, Roman Gushchin roman.gushchin@linux.dev wrote:

I think it makes the point of sashiko - helping maintainers - unachievable. If the point to not use
LLMs in general, let’s discuss this, not how to make each use case more complex.

It seems like [1] expresses a very anti-LLM position in general

Yes.

And no, that’s not the position of the Linux kernel.

I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area
where I’m willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level
maintainer.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues
with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one.

It may not have been that “clearly” even just a year ago, but it’s no
longer in question today.

There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will
actually look like in the end), but “is it useful” is no longer one of
those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn’t actually used
it.

Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer
workloads and just from a “it keeps finding embarrassing bugs”
standpoint.

But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing “La La
La, I can’t hear you” at the top of your voice like some people seem
to do.

The solution is to make sure those LLM tools help maintainers
instead of just causing them pain. There’s no question on that side.

We’re not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore
people who try to argue against other people from using it.

And no, AI isn’t perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the
problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at
themselves at the same time.

Because it’s not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.

The kernel project has been and will continue to be about the technology.

Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and
often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that’s a
side benefit, not the point of the project.

This is NOT some kind of “social warrior” project, never has been,
and never will be.

In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better
technology, not because of religious reasons.

And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear
of new tools.
          Linus

cbrake · October 16, 2026, 8:39pm

More thoughts from Linus on AI use:

From Linus Torvalds <>
Date Tue, 13 Oct 2026 13:45:09 -0700
Subject Re: [PATCH] docs: remove Assisted-by references
On Tue, 13 Oct 2026 at 13:16, Laurent Pinchart
laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com wrote:

What this is about is setting our expectations, telling what we want and
what we don’t want.

No. What you are about is something entirely different. It has nothing
to do with “expectations”, and it has everything to do with your
hangups.

I don’t understand this whole idiotic concept of “don’t use AI for X”.

Here’s a new rule just for you: don’t use compilers for any of your
kernel submissions.

Because if you can’t show that you really understand what the machine
is actually doing by writing your code in assembler, then I don’t want
to see your code contribution. You clearly aren’t competent if you
can’t write it that way.

And btw, you had better not use an editor to write that commit message either.

Because I need you to show me that you can actually write a good
commit message without using tools that make it easy to backspace and
hide the mistakes you made while typing.

Ok?

Because otherwise those tool-assisted commits of yours clearly aren’t
showing that you know what you are doing.

Do you not see how UTTERLY STUPID those kinds of rules would be?

So no. We’re not going to make stupid rules that say “you can’t use
tools for X”.

The kind of expectations I have is that people do their best and I
expect people to understand what they are doing.

But that understanding has very little to do with what tools they use.

And quite honestly, in my experience, the people I respect and call
intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and
interesting tools.
               Linus