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

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

Hi Sasha,

On Fri, Jul 17, 2026 at 10:09:56AM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 11:38:10PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Hey Laurent,
> 
> Not sure I follow here.

I may have misunderstood you. I thought you meant developing LLM-based
tools, but re-reading your comment I think you may have meant using
generative AI to develop tools.

> My thinking was that trying to improve our processes and tooling has been a
> topic for the past decade or two. One of the times we discussed it was the 2019
> maintainer's summit (https://lwn.net/Articles/799134/) where we decided to
> create the workflows@ mailing list to share our tooling and workflows. Not much
> of that has been happening :)
> 
> In the past year or two I was able to rewrite most of my ugly scripts, automate
> so many of the processes I used to do manually, and just improve so many
> quality of life items thanks to AI. Look even at the CVE process that was
> created last year: so much of the infrastructure used to drive it was created
> with AI.
> 
> Now, if AI suddenly goes away tomorrow it'll suck for me, but I'll just go back
> to writing my tools manually like I did before. I don't think that I somehow
> became "dependant" on it.

My concerns is largely about using generative AI to automate daily
tasks. Increase such usage will cause a dependence, and the withdrawal
will hurt the more usage grows.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart