I wish more would listen.
Many seem to interpret the headline as “Torvalds is an AI Bro now,” when its more like him yelling “If you all don’t treat these things as tools, shit is going to hit the fan.”
After seeing what happened to windows because of this “tool” I think many of us are rightfully skeptical of what will happen to this community.
It happened before, why are we okay with it happening again?
Microsoft doesn’t treat it as a tool; that’s the problem.
…Which isn’t surprising. Not only because Microsoft is Microsoft, but they own like a third of OpenAI, so they have a vested interest in perpetuating the AI hype.
Microsoft has far more people relying on their products to work, so you’d think they’d exercise far more diligence in making things work…
Well… Microsoft is Microsoft.
This is what they do. They simply cannot help themselves.
It honestly makes me distrust the whole move because you would genuinely think that if the world depends on your stuff to work you would make it work, AI or not.
We’re still talking about Microsoft, right?
They have a looooong history of enshittification and footgunning that predates “AI” by decades, no matter how much the world has depended on their stuff. So no, I suppose I wouldn’t think that, as that would break decades of precedence for MS. But I suppose I never trusted them in the first place.
It’s strange to me because well, I was a 20+ years windows veteran who managed to never have issues on any of my windows installs prior to the last couple years when the ai thing went full swing. maybe part of that was me, because I was inattentive and reckless, but it really just became too much to ignore. i have a genuinely hard time with the idea of essentially retconning the way things always used to Just Work for me in my Windows days. maybe it was bad when I was there and I just didn’t notice. but blegh.
Far more people compared to what?
Linux which is still stuck at around 3% market share
Windows basically rules the world on desktop PCs
Desktop PCs are really small part of the whole, far more people rely on working linux systems to work, like orders of magnitude more.
far more people rely on working linux systems to work
Far more people work on Windows machines to do work
I mean the fact that one of my biggest sources of productivity back when I was there has been essentially nuked since I left, does make me feel limited even though everything else works really well so far. Hopefully that changes but I’m having a hard time migrating that last piece of the puzzle over.
It does make me feel like we need more people here, to make that work.
Entryism. Promote a “rational adaptation” scheme, reject “slop”, embrace “gems”, try to use it as a “helping tool”.
The reality is much grimmer: Some vibe coders lie about them only using it as a tool, them “reading the output” is just getting it compiled and maybe pass some (AI generated) tests, and overly trust the genAI over classical search engines. People using the tools show some degree of AI psychosis, such as trying to “prompt” flesh and blood people (“I’ve read on a blog that…” is often used to make chatbots agree with you, and is also used towards humans by those who talk to chatbots a bit too much).
I understand the spirit of what he means, but I still don’t know how an LLM can be used efficiently as a precise tool like this. If I can describe a problem narrowly enough to guide an LLM to give a useful output, I’ve already solved it myself and may as well just type it out.
Exactly same thinking. I can usually type it out faster than AI (when taking into account latency, context building, prompt writing, prompt fixing, AI hallucination review) if I know what exactly needs to be done.
When you’re out of your depth, it shines in providing beautifully confident and a botanical garden of a code piece that wil most likely be broken and break in new and exciting ways. Great for incompetent sycophantically-challenged managers that forgot how to code, or never actually had any experience.
Large-scale code transformations, taking into account the bigger picture of the repository are most likely hallucination free (not generative, just transformative, as per the actual LLM model) and a very exciting use-case.
Also it’s currently a very nice pragmatic tool for checking for any mistakes, because it can connect the larger context of the repository quickly to the diff. Terrible if done by a manager without understanding of copilot and workflow, but a great tool if done through claude and cli as a pre-commit step with just quick checklists. Makes plenty of mistakes, but allows to catch your own big mistakes nicely quickly.
If there’s anybody I trust to use LLMs in a responsible way, (to whatever degree that’s even possible) it would be Linus Torvalds. He has some of the highest standards for software development in the world, and the same can be said for the core Linux kernel development team.
The general problem though, is that the people who are the least qualified to do software development are very often the people who are the most likely to use LLMs to try to slop their way to the top.
I think that the combination of cost increases for inference, inherent limitations in model integrity, and the economic destruction that will ensue when these fraudster CEOs have finally squeezed every last drop of blood from every last stone they can find, will leave “AI” in a similar place as blockchain/crypto/NFTs.
There will be a relatively niche market for software engineers and related tech workers; local LLM boxes, some subscription-based models that companies pay for with their licensing packages, hobbyists, and some minimal integrations into software suites for tools like background removal, lighting enhancement, etc.
There will be no Singularity, no AGI, no all-knowing Machine God.
Did the headline change? The current headline is Torvalds: “100% of Their Code is Written by Compilers” Too
The title of this post makes for a dumb headline, at any rate. Linus, in response to claims in the industry that projects are now “99% written by AI”, drew an analogy to compilers by saying that all machine code for projects are written by compilers, yet no one says their project was 100% written by a compiler. It’s just talking about stupid hype, which is valid.
That being said, it’s still quite unfortunate that Linus has fallen into the trap of LLMs.
I don’t get the impression he’s fallen in the trap at all.
More so, he sees it for what it is. It’s a tool that can help, but needs smart people that can validate its output. It can’t design entire systems nor effectively solve real world business problems on its own. It’s not going anywhere, so may as well adapt to our new reality.
Source did change the title if you look at the URL matches what OP posted
Well, unlike the compiler I don’t trust the AI enough not to re read the result.
For now it’s the pair programing buddy that helps me debug. There are stuff where it’s definitely more efficient than a human is.
@[email protected] , may I ask why do you change the title so awfully it does not only not state the same as the article but misleads it?
The URL they posted has the same title as the post here so it’s the source that changed their title after the fact.
Thank you, but no, it does not. The URL may mean literally anything, where the “slug” may not include question marks, any punctuation, or have a partial content even:
torvalds-ai-is-the-new-compiler-not-the-new-programmerWhat if the nonsense/sloppy slug was generated like?:
Torvalds: AI is the new compiler, and not the new programmer? Torvalds. AI. The new compiler is not the new programmer.Therefore, the URL may not express the actual title, and may also be malformed.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Yeah, what if? No way lol
So it looks like the source originally used that awful title misrepresenting the article it self. In other words the source needs to be blacklisted for spreading bullshit. Dose this community have a blacklist yet?
I know blacklisting sources is a steep slope to censorship, but at a certain point if the source feels they need to click bait people with tabloid headlines they are not worth our time.
It’s moderation, automating a local rule about reliable sources.
I just think it should fail early, so the user doesn’t type a whole post only for it to be blocked.
AI is the new grifter buzzword 😐
But you still have to compile
So funny thing, a colleague of mine was arguing that there’s no reason to do a compiler because he got Claude to generate ELF binary directly for a hello world…
Some of the AI bros are very extremely bullish on it too the point of saying compilers are a waste of time…
I meaaan i guess. I don’t think the training set is good enough for anything complex eyes
When the next thing is invented, then we’ll have to do three things.
fuckin gross.
I hope this new adoption didn’t contributed to recent AMD GPU driver bugs
Pretty unlikely.
The way the kernel devs seem to be using LLMs isn’t really going to lead to any bugs that wound’t have snuck in anyways.
I’m not a tech bro or AI apologist. I’m choosing to skeptically trust Linus in this case. Based on my understanding of how it’s being used, I don’t think we have a lot to worry about.
That being said I wish he would STFU about it because the “Linus is pro-AI now guys” headlines are not doing the world any favors.
Using AI with Rust compiler is a combination that’s worked well for me many times already. You can check out https://slingshotspeeders.com/ if you want to experience compiled Rust in the browser using Bevy 0.19 for an orbital mechanics simulation racing game for free with no account easily.
Brain damage.
Yup. He’s lost.
Whole tech world is cooked
It’s a shame
There are some holdouts, here and there. But, they are a tiny minority.
This subject makes me really sad. It makes me want to go for a walk and appreciate the mountains and green grass and flowers and berries. I’m excited for snow, already.
it feels like the industry i used to feel excited for is going head first into enshittification.
The road to hell is paved by good intentions.
I think most people involved just have really shitty moral compasses. A lot of them look the other way to pay the bills, jingle jangle shiny nice life; others probably don’t even see it, rationalizing or even believing that what they’re doing is good; and other still probably genuinely think what they’re doing is good, their knowledge base formed from a place of self-unaware extreme privilege, but effectively exactly the opposite.
Too many people in this world have no concept or deliberation of worldview and morality. Many of them just lost, most of them followers, so few able to make any real change. Humanity is sick and has been fighting itself for eternity. Strife is normal, but this level and type of idiocy is something we are only recently starting to become aware of, helped further along by the very telecommunications that are now under control of the oppressors. We had a glimpse of truth for a while in the internet’s youth. I’d like to see that continue, but the very fact that the oppressors are now the ones POURING ALL of their wealth and influence on it shows us how much of a threat it was. It’s going to take those of us privileged enough to know, to push back ahead with everything we have, and lead society once again.
If we are to gain our freedom from the attractive clutches of the manosphere and fascism and the conservative low-empathy creature ilk, we must systematically disassemble and dismantle their ideas and views with superiority, as with all changes in evolution. I believe truth will prevail, eventually. How much more pain and suffering we all endure, though, is yet to be known, and unlikely to be known by anyone alive today.
Which brings us back to the efficiency equation of sustaining mental health and consolidation of power. This doesn’t have to be a long flight, but it will be, as the powers that be are quite infected with ideas completely opposite to good will, peace, and freedom, and are quite well equipped to continue fighting at this attrition pace.
For you, and anyone else reading this, I implore you to sit alone with your own thoughts more often, and work out why certain things are the way they are. Continue asking why, recursively. Inquire deeply when you see weakness or strength. Seek empathy and real solutions, not immediate blame. For almost all problems are NOT simple, and will take generational time to really solve, and generational wealth to get done. Everything adds up. Plant seeds of good.
Seek community and be good to each other.
And, yeah this is cheesy, but, to quote Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, “Never be cruel”, and “Love is always wise.”
I love hiking and the fresh mountain air in the spring. The quiet, the sun, the breeze, and the views. It reminds me that we are all just visitors here, and one day, every single one of us is going to have to say goodbye and take the forever sleep. Appreciate what you have, but always strive for more.
Think, deliberate, rest, fight, help others, repeat.
It’s okay to fight for what’s right, it’s the right thing to do, even. Don’t let anybody ever convince you otherwise.
Man I wish he would just shut up.
[Monkey’s finger curls]
You can no longer download his code for the kernel or git.
Never seen a non-deterministic compiler though
Or one that pretends compilation was a success when it wasn’t.
Technically, LLMs (and most ML models) are deterministic with the same input and same seed.
I get what you mean though.
So does ChatGPT intentionally change seed at every interaction so it always spits two different outputs given the same input?
In short: yes. You can tune these values when self hosting - it basically changes the b chance which tokens will be used under which circumstances.
Like Scipitie said, sort of.
In the ChatGPT app, there’s tons of shuffling in the background, like context being injected, maybe sampling changed, agenic action, quantization… its “far” from the actual LLM, opaque by design, and as a result certainly not deterministic.
You can sometimes get deterministic output with the OpenAI API, but it’s also dependent on nothing changing on their end. And their end changes a lot.
But self hosting or using a more consistent provider will give you deterministic output.
Yeah, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen…
C/C++ compilers are non deterministic due to support of super macros that change run to run, non-deterministic optimisation strategies or ordering due to parallelism, and linkers often produce different outputs every time they are run where subtle bugs can cause crashes when addresses don’t line up how you expect. And that’s without mentioning projects that use a configuration step.
It’s actually a big problem in producing reproducible builds for security.
Can’t most serious compilers produce reproducible builds these days given the same build environment. I know there has been a drive towards reproducible builds in general for security verification purposes.
Yeah, but it does take a lot of work to coerce them to do it.
GCC is honestly obnoxious, and you have to do a bunch of unintuitive things to get it. The compile stage needs the built-in RNG seeded, parent file paths stripped, you need to ensure that the date/time macros are not used anywhere, and you need to ensure that all command line flags are passed in the exact same order every time.
I just went through this with GCC16 on a new project.
Not by default usually but yes, you need to do a lot of work to set all necessary configurations and sometimes provide your own RNG seed for things which insist on random looking values.
Not only can they but certified toolchains exist in the safety critical space. Medical, aerospace, nuclear projects, and the like are often required to use and procure such toolchains as part of their validation.
I’m not very good with C/C++ so please correct me, isn’t that what’s called a “race condition”? Parallelism can cause non-determinism but not in the same sense LLMs generate non-deterministic output. Compilers are not statistical machines.
You can have single threaded race conditions appear simply from inputs appearing in an unintended ordering. Or on a single core CPU, you can have one task meant to be done first take unusually long time, so the CPU gives time to another thread which finishes first but expected to finish last.
From my understanding, which is very limited, race conditions are more an issue with concurrent programming. Parallel computing uses separate processor cores for each task so there’s less reliance on stack machines. But I guess each core still shares the memory, so maybe it still happens. Like I said, my understanding is limited. Just use rust.
You don’t need parallelism to have a race condition, just not handling an event with expected timing can cause one - like when two keys are pressed within one polling cycle and you depend on one being pressed before the other for some logic like up and right arrow for a diagonal but they register as right and up so the diagonal movement doesn’t trigger
Compiler optimisation strategies sometimes use statistical machines and link time optimisation does use random number generators for producing output
An LLM is not inherently non-deterministic though - if you don’t randomly sample and instead have a fixed rule (which is what the recent fingerprint embedding approach does), if applied in all cases the output is deterministic, as the neural net at its core is deterministic function. A lot of the randomness beyond that is due to optimizations [source].
LLMs are however unreliable at ‘compiling’. Whether or not it will be able to complete the requested task (translate human language into code) correctly it not guaranteed - at least nowhere near the compilers we use.
While they can be deterministic in runtime they can be compared to cryptographic hashes in that they come preloaded with pseudorandomness which will behave unpredictably
There is a parameter in llms called temperature. If you reduce it down to zero it will become deterministic. And probably even worse.
Yeah but the output would be crap. Just use the same prng seed and you’ll get reproducible output.
If you do that it will basically produce the most average possible output, given the context. I don’t know if that’s going to be useful in a compiler context…
Exactly this. If you made an LLM that had deterministic code output then I’m all up for saying “AI is a compiler for human language”. But until then AI is most definitely not a compiler.
Setting the temperature parameter to 0.00 makes an LLM deterministic.
No. Floating point arithmetic and ordering of operations won’t make 0.0 deterministic.
Um… yes. Matrix multiplication is deterministic, there’s nothing non-deterministic about an LLM, unless you artificially add randomness to them, like randomly selecting 1 of the top N ranked tokens.
The function is deterministic, agreed. The implementation is almost always not. Hardware floating point addition is not associative. So a GPU kernel that splits a reduction differently (ie interleaving it with anything else, like running your graphics, or sharing your work with other users on the same hardware) will produce different results over different runs even at temperature 0.0.
Determinism is almost always impossible when dealing with floating point on a multi-process/multi-user system.
There are attempts to create batch invariant language models (https://github.com/thinking-machines-lab/batch_invariant_ops) but all the major ones are not.
