Linus Torvalds admits he has a 'love-hate relationship with AI'

"“AI is a great tool, but it's a tool” rather than a wholesale replacement for programmers. He said modern AI tools are reshaping how developers work on the kernel, driving up contribution volume and exposing new social and security stresses in the open‑source world. He also emphasized that there will always be work for programmers, even as AI changes workflows and participation patterns."

"“In the last six months, we've seen a lot more commits,” Torvalds noted, estimating that “the last two releases, it's been about 20% more commits than we had in the previous releases over many years.” He connected the change to the rise of AI coding tools, saying the release process had been stable for about 20 years since the move to Git, but that trend broke about six months ago."

"“At first I thought, 'hey, people are excited about the 7.0 release because I changed the major number every once in a while...' and it turns out I was wrong. The real change that happened in the last six months was that the AI tools actually got good enough for a lot of people... we're seeing a definite uptick in just development on pretty much all fronts.” He attributed the commit surge to improved AI tool capability rather than version-number excitement."

"Torvalds acknowledged that the new tools lower the barrier of entry for contributors, echoing Hohndel's observation that “the tooling actually lowers this initial barrier.” He also noted that AI remains a mixed blessing for security work, since AI tools can help but do not consistently improve the process of finding and fixing security bugs."

Modern AI tools are changing how developers contribute to the Linux kernel, increasing commit volume and affecting collaboration dynamics. The Linux kernel release process has been stable for about 20 years since the move to Git, but a shift occurred roughly six months ago as AI coding tools improved. The number of commits rose, with recent releases showing about 20% more commits than earlier releases. The spike was initially mistaken for excitement about a major version change, but it was attributed to AI tools becoming good enough for many contributors. AI lowers the barrier for new contributors, while security bug finding and fixing remains a mixed outcome.

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