Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] The role of AI and LLMs in the kernel process

[Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2025 at 07:04:02AM +0300, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
>On Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 02:39:20PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
>> I don't think we should expect a bar for AI that is higher than the one
>> we set for humans.
>
>We absolutely should.
>
>There is a thing with computers is that they are perfect. They are so
>infinitely perfect compared to humans that anything downgrading computers
>levels of perfection to humans level of perfection must be rejected
>because it can't be scaled back and thus will be permanent loss.
>
>Would you install calculator application which you know reports wrong
>results 1% of the time?

Let's look at the last release and see :)

$ git log --oneline --no-merges -i --grep ^fixes: --grep cc:.*stable v6.15..v6.16 | wc -l
2734
$ git log --oneline --no-merges v6.15..v6.16 | wc -l
14639

So at least ~20% of the commits that go in are fixes for issues - one
can make the argument that 20% of the kernel is "broken" :)

In your calculator example, if the calculator is making an error 1% of
the time doing simple addition, I would not buy it. If it's making an
error 1% of the time in an edgecase of something I probably would never
use? Sure, I'd happily take the calculator.

>Would you uninstall calculator after realizing it has 1% bug rate?

I'm assuming we both agree that the kernel has over 1% "bug rate"
throughout all of the various usecases it's being used in, why haven't
you uninstalled it yet?

-- 
Thanks,
Sasha