Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] The role of AI and LLMs in the kernel process

[Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>]

On Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 01:43:00PM -0400, Sasha Levin wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 01:23:18PM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Tue, 2025-08-05 at 18:11 +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 05, 2025 at 12:43:38PM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > > On Tue, 2025-08-05 at 17:03 +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > >
> > > > > * On the other hand, there are use cases which are useful - test
> > > > > data/code generation, summarisation, smart auto-complete - so
> > > > > it'd perhaps be foolish to entirely dismiss AI.
> > >
> > > > Patch backporting is another such nice use.
> > >
> > > Patch backporting sounds pretty scary to me, it's the sort of thing
> > > where extra context that needs to be accounted for is very likely to
> > > come up (eg, assumptions you can make about existing state or
> > > santisation).
> >
> > If you think about it, the git history contains the exact patch path
> > between where the patch was applied and where you want to apply it.
> > That's a finite data set which LLMs can be trained to work nicely with.
>
> Most of the patches that fail to backport and get a "FAILED:" mail as a
> result are really just either a trivial context conflict ar a missing
> dependency.

Yeah I'm not surprised by that!

>
> Resolving those is within the realm of a "junior engineer" which I
> suspect AI would tackle fairly well.

Right.

>
> The other ~10-20% are indeed something more complex due to things like a
> major rewrite/refactor/etc of a subsystem, where I wouldn't trust the
> current state of the art AI to tackle. But mayble a few years from now?

Well, I have my doubts :) I think it's always a trade-off of scrutiny +
class of error vs. time gains.

But this is, of course, a point of debate.

>
> --
> Thanks,
> Sasha

By the way Sasha, I was planning to cc- you as this is obviously entirely
related to your series and I'm more than happy to propose a join discussion
or something like this, - I just followed the rules as per the maintainers
summit email strictly and didn't know whether I _could_ cc :)

I would enjoy having a friendly discussion about it in person regardless :)

Cheers, Lorenzo