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

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

Unavoidably, LLMs are the hot topic in tech right now, and are here to
stay.

This poses unique problems:

* Never before have people been able to generate as much content that may,
  on a surface reading, seem valid whilst in reality being quite the
  opposite.

* Equally, LLM's can introduce very subtle mistakes that humans find
  difficult to pick up upon - humans implicitly assume that the classes of
  errors they will encounter are the kinds other humans would make - AI
  defeats that instinct.

* The kernel is uniquely sensitive to erroneous (especially subtly
  erroneous) code - even small errors can be highly consequential. We use a
  programming language that can almost be defined by its lack of any kind
  of safety, and in some subsystems patches are simply taken if no obvious
  problems exist, making us rather vulnerable to this.

* 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.

A very important non-technical point we must consider is that, the second
we even appear to be open to AI submission of _any_ kind, the press will
inevitably report on it gleefully, likely with oversimplified headlines
like 'Linux accepts AI patches'.

The moment that happens, we are likely to see a significant uptick in AI
submissions whether we like it or not.

I propose that we establish the broad rules as they pertain to the kernel,
and would like to bring the discussion to the Maintainer's Summit so we can
determine what those should be.

It's important to get a sense of how maintainers feel about this - whether
what is proposed is opt-in or opt-out - and how we actually implement this.

There has been discussion on-list about this (see [0]), with many
suggestions made including a 'traffic light' system per-subsystem, however
many open questions remain - the devil is in the details.

[0]:https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250727195802.2222764-1-sashal@kernel.org/