Re: [PATCH RFC] coding-assistants: simplify attribution

[Lorenzo Stoakes <ljs@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 04:07:40PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 01:18:06PM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > But then it becomes an arms race. People will get AI to try to defeat AI
> > detection. So I'm not sure it's a safe road to go down.
>
> That would be my concern too.
>
> At this stage, I think it's better to make sure people know our
> expectations, and expect that the vast majority will understand it's a
> trust-based system where being caught willingly breaching trust will
> have a very high cost. Or have we reached a point where that doesn't
> work any more ?

Unfortunately there's a lot of people who have bad motives or feel there's
prestige in kernel commits and are willing to cheat their way to it, or are
pressured by their workplace, or etc. etc.

So I think this is far too idealistic. I've seen too much undisclosed AI being
submitted and those people stridently denying they used it when it's brought up.

So I think tags are really useful to push back against those who are in good
faith.

And for those who submit it dishonestly, I personally believe _reasonable_ and
_strong_ evidence to believe it's generated should be enough to reject.

But there's not universal agreement on that, unfortunately, which makes it
politically difficult.

I think honestly the only solution long-term will not even be to reject like
this but rather we'll have to basically restrict newcomers to a very narrow band
of submissions and have them build trust before they can send more.

Which really, really sucks but I don't see how we can keep the kernel alive any
other way when the slop really ramps up.

>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Laurent Pinchart

Thanks, Lorenzo