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 11:10:51AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

>
> It would seem to me to be far more useful  to get AI to help find hard-to-see but perhaps common problems, or tidying up code (like Coccinelle on steroids.)
>
> Things that are easy to see post hoc are correct, but can be hard or laborious to do.

Right, as long as we get the RoI right on the efforts to check the results,
that's a great suggestion.

>
> Another genuinely good usage for AI is for especially non-English speakers to tidy up their patch comments and other documentation.

Yes, I have a lot of empathy for this and I gather non-native speakers find
it extraordinarily useful for this task in general.

This is a very good point as to why we have to be careful not to have a
broad-brush approach like 'no AI', as there are uses that do not cause
issues of concern but are of great use to people using them.

It would be rather egregious to demand that non-native speakers using LLMs
for this purpose disclose the fact that would label the patch in the same
fashion as, say, a very broken LLM kernel patch let's say.

There really has to be a fine-grained approach to this - the devil truly is
in the details here.

Cheers, Lorenzo