Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Other LLM-related topics - tags, newcomers, etc

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

Hi Sasha,

On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 12:24:45PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 05:08:40PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> >On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 11:28:25AM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 09:09:27AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> >
> >> > - There are many first-time contributors coming in with LLM-generated
> >> >  patches.  At times, I could swear that every one of them is focused on
> >
> >> >  Our maintainers are not scaling to handle this new flood, and I fear we
> >> >  are going to see some unfortunate things merged.  One LLM-driven newcomer
> >> >  recently nearly succeeded in establishing himself as the maintainer of
> >> >  lib/.  How do we hold the line against this stuff while remaining open to
> >> >  new developers?
> >
> >> Shouldn't it be a merits question rather than a tools question?
> >
> >> If the commits are correct, does it matter if they were written with an LLM? we
> >> can insist more on supplying tests and demonstrating correctness, something we
> >> seem to be doing quite rarely right now.
> >
> > The issue (which a number of projects are facing) is as much one of
> > volume as anything else, the code generation machines are enabling the
> > generation and submision of volumes of code where things were previously
> > constrained by human factors.  It can turn into a bit of a DoS.  I don't
> > have any particularly bright ideas here but it's definitely a thing.
> 
> Sure, we're seeing quite the increase in patch submissions, but I'm trying to
> argue that the issue isn't a new one: lack of maintainers, trusted reviewers,
> and maintainer burnout has been a topic at each kernel summit for as long as I
> can remember. AI just kicks it up a notch.
> 
> My concern is that if we focus on the AI aspect, we still won't be solving the
> underlying issue.
> 
> I'm hoping we can figure out how to get maintainers great tooling, testing, and
> community, rather than figuring out how to block a developer who uses LLM.
> Maybe AI would actually be a great catalyst for that as well?

Didn't you argue in another part of this thread that we're in no danger
of being depending on AI for our processes ? I see a contradiction here.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart