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

[Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>]

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?

-- 
Thanks,
Sasha