AI in Linux

The role of AI tools (LLMs, mainly) in Linux is under discussion, or it was, until Linus Torvalds “put his foot down” in support of the use of AI in Linux kernel development.

I can identify two major ways in which AI is used for Linux kernel development: authoring code and reviewing code. There are, at the time of writing, just over 1,200 kernel commits with an “Assisted-by” tag, from September 2025 to the present, most of which indicate patches which were written or assisted by LLM tools.

The second important use of AI for Linux comes with a new code review tool called Sashiko, which generates code reviews for patches considered for various subsystems. Sashiko ignited the current debate on AI in Linux because it pushes the envelope on AI in Linux: people who oppose or do not want to use AI could previously just refrain from using it to write their patches, but now there is a growing expectation that anyone who wants to contribute to Linux will have to interact with Sashiko or other AI tools like it to iterate on AI-generated feedback on their work.

One of the major lines of this discussion in the Linux kernel community has been with respect to the ethical considerations of the use of LLMs. Linus shuts this line of reasoning down entirely, firmly grounding the discussion in technical merits and rejecting any political discourse on the matter:

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.

This argumentation is disingenuous and hypocritical. Linux is a political project and Linus is a political actor. Consider the use of the GPLv2 for licensing Linux. One can argue from…