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Linus Torvalds shares his thoughts on Anti-AI coding rules (europe.pub)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

You can't really control the use of tools though, that is the problem. AI detection doesn't work and leads to a lot of false positives. The only thing you can do is check if the product is good.

AI is horrible for the world but it is impossible to ban it for coding, as you can easily submit AI generated code that looks human.

He is not comparing the effects that tools have but that you can't control if someone uses them or not.

The only way I see for controlling the way AI is used, is if the AI companies put restrictions on it.

If you ban AI, the vibe coders will just lie about the origin of their code.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

    You can’t really control the use of tools though

    You start on a false premise. Immense swathes of the legal system are designed to control the use of tools, are they not? Legality aside, most people aren't sociopaths, and can handle being responsible humans. You don't even mention that, in many cases, you can just ask.

    He is not comparing the effects that tools have but that you can’t control if someone uses them or not.

    I don't agree that he's talking about verifiability or honesty.

    I don't see the argument that if some bad actors are going to lie in PRs, that we should just let the floodgates open.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    You're correct but still completely missing the point.

    The only way to implement anti-LLM rules is to detect AI-assisted code. That, in and of itself, is a problem because it's impossible to detect good code that was AI assisted. And you don't need rules against slop because it's bad code.

    If I'm following it correctly, Linus is advocating for tightening submission requirements before it gets to human review, which directly targets the harms FOSS projects are having under the deluge of slop: it raises the bar so that the slop needs to be good enough to warrant a review, which filters out must of the noise, leaving more of the signal.

    Anti-LLM policies are like having closed-book take-home exams: you're left wildly guessing what's cheating (or not). Instead, make the exam open book, but expect better answers.

    Linus also says AI is a useful tool, and he is an expert, so we must accept that he feels that way. I don't know if he's commented on the environmental/social/political consequences of AI hyperscalers, but that's a separate argument.

    The tech is here. It's impossible to detect. It's foolish to think you can ban it's use

    And it can be run locally, so there's no stopping it, even if there was political will to do so. (And with a reasonable economic and ecological cost, no less—ignoring IP/political consequences here, since that's a whole other topic.)

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago

    You’re correct but still completely missing the point.

    Thanks ;)

    The only way to implement anti-LLM rules is to detect AI-assisted code.

    From direct experience, this just isn't true. I contribute to a small open source project, and we're doing well enough for our purposes by simply saying "no AI". We're not checking, we work on good faith. That's enough for us. We have no reason to think people are circumventing it.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    I think AI needs to be regulated on a larger scale. The tools need to be restricted if you want to stop people from using them.

    Putting up rules against tool use without making access to the tool more difficult are worthless.

    Putting up slop PRs doesn't have to be intentional from the authors side.

    How would you check commits for AI use if it is not mentioned anywhere? How would you enforce anti-AI rules?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    I contribute to a small project, where we simply ask that PRs don't include AI, then we proceed on the basis of good faith.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    On the small scale the good faith approach works. But on the scale of the linux kernel it would have minimal to no effect to ban AI contributions.

    For the code quality it's better to enforce proper reviewing and checking of the code instead of banning specific methods of producing code.

    Banning AI is as enforceable as banning vscode.

    I myself don't use ai in general and I despise the attitude towards ai of some people in the community but I don't think banning ai on this side of the problem has any effect on the code quality and the way things are contributed. I think ai needs to be regulated on a government level. Like removing datacenters or financing of ai companies, which both can also be done on a local government level.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    AI detection doesn’t work and leads to a lot of false positives

    Anthropic have begun watermarking their outputs (which is possible thanks to EU legislation) so yes you can detect ai output.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Most ai output has been watermarked since I think 2023, Anthropic is just more open about it.

    I am pretty sure this still produces too many false positives when applied to code because of the way these watermarks are implemented. I am not 100% sure on that though. It could be used on commit messages though.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Nah the EU legislation made it so that it has to be watermarked (LLM output was not watermarked until that passed, it was just image and music output) and discernible with a tool to tell. So you can check if something is AI generated. Anthropic says it should work on code.

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