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>The same process is pricing regular people out of the energy they need to power their air conditioner during those heat waves and the technology it enables is pushing them out of the labor market and into poverty.
I don't see evidence this is true, and the critical mass of data centers is making electricity cheaper. Economies of scale -> more energy = bigger electric plants = cheaper energy.
https://netchoice.org/new-study-confirms-what-weve-been-sayi...
> Economies of scale -> more energy = bigger electric plants = cheaper energy.
Problem is; power plants are not something that can be spun up with a kubectl invocation.
Power plants need to be built. This process takes YEARS, and in some cases over a decade. And that's just the plants themselves. The grid also has to be built out to be able to handle the new load.
And while this potentially +10year process is ongoing, the current supply is gobbled up, and prices for consumers skyrocket.
Yes, eventuelly, market forces may solve the issue. By then however, it will already be too late for many areas, with residents being priced out of a basic utility.
Or worse, the markets may not solve the issue at all.
Because; all this building out of electrical gear and power plants, requires very specific resources and talent. Whta if the markets decide that these resources are much better allocated (at least from the PoV of company shareholders), in building power generation capacity exclusively for datacenters, and the consumer market is simply ignored?
The largest build-out, which is in renewables, features plants that can go up very quickly, at least. The grid upgrades are the bigger bottleneck.
> Economies of scale -> more energy = bigger electric plants = cheaper energy.
This isn't true. Certainly not globally. Because electricity in 2026 is converting finite and scares resources. Plants need fuel to burn, water to cool, material to build, land to sit on, etc. Yes, even Nuclear plants¹ need increasingly more scarce resources like "coolant".
What has been bringing electricity prices down is renewables: insane amounts of solar and wind being installed hourly. But even with that, we are still lagging, globally: energy prices are -on average- rising, projects halted or stalled because of lack of electrical capacity and ever increasing amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Not less. Not cheaper. Not more supply.
¹ https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260712-france-temporari...
It is true globally as well, but there are certainty anecdotes where confounding factors makes it not true like what you've highlighted with specific France Nuclear reactors.
We should be cognizant of the environmental impact of producing more energy, but it still remains true that making more energy means cheaper energy across the resources we have today.
Yeah, I wouldn't have that paper peer reviewed either. Garbage methodology.
> I don't see evidence this is true
One does not need to look very far.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/13/utah-approve...
> The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes
netchoice is a lobbying organization for the hyperscalers, you're straight up sharing a propaganda piece
Which metric do you disagree with presented on the site?
I read through this and must have missed it, but I don't see a single example of AI use in the Linux kernel development posing a problem.
The article isn't trying to find a particular example. It's talking about the overall stance of Linux on AI use. It argues that maintainers should consider political/moral/ethical arguments around climate change, effect on water supplies, energy prices, etc.
AI is just a tech like any other. Can be powered by CO2-neutral electricity like anything else. Otherwise, we'll have to protest against aluminum cans, airplanes, golf courts, lemon trees, and whatever else that uses water or electricity.
> It argues that maintainers should consider political/moral/ethical arguments around climate change, effect on water supplies, energy prices, etc
Is the assumption that maintainers did not consider those things?
Why not fix all the issues with private jets and yachts first? Why don't they use regular public transportation as we all do? Instead, let's bash poor Clanker, who reviews kernel code.
The thing I'd worry about is it slowly handing over control of Linux's direction to the tech companies who control and regulate the AI being used to help develop it. The complexity is only growing. These companies are themselves extremely political and decide what AI is and isn't legal when Linux demands using the most capable models for security reasons. So it would be good at least if the project actually cared and had it's own principles besides ignoring the politics.
But the code being GPL means those companies don't have control over it. They can restrict the use of AI but the codes already generated, they would just go back to writing by hand. Its a non-issue. The same objection came up when Microsoft started contributing to the kernel.
And despite the author’s logical leaps; no it's not impossible to fork the kernel and go another route. The fact it doesn't happen is because its stewardship so far has been exceptional.
It's not a political issue. It's a religious one with the anti AI people raising pitchforks.
Tens of thousands of people dying as a direct result of global warming! Not a problem! /s
From the title, I was hoping this was going to be a story about the major AI distros agreeing on an API and basic AI capabilities to be included in Linux just like Microsoft and Apple have done with their operating systems.
Instead, it's:
> how many tons of CO₂ added to the atmosphere or liters of fresh water supplies disrupted is a tolerable price for a better code review?
The answer isn't zero, is it?
And also it can be zero. Nuclear power is CO2 neutral. So is solar.
Pardon my nitpick, but producing solar panels isn’t emission free.
This is a “everything is political” rant but now with 50% more AI.
like we could expect something other than that from DDV
The author seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill, to be honest. Linux has never been a "political project" like the author asserts. GNU is closer to that, but even GNU has a purely technical component (the software itself).
I propose we get rid of tiktok videos and let the kernel devs use AI. That should balance.
> The AI built-out is by far the fastest growing energy consumer in the world, and they’re being built with fossil fuels, or drawing green energy demand away from replacing the fossil fuels depended on by other industries.
This paragraph links to the IEA report which does indeed call datacenters the fastest growing energy consumer, but also says:
> Despite rapid growth, data centres remain a relatively small part of the overall power system, rising from about 1% of global electricity generation today to 3% in 2030, accounting for less than 1% of total global CO2 emissions.
For scale, beef production is about 9% of total greenhouse gas emission.
If everything is political, as DDV likes to rant every now and then, then Linus' politics are those related to how software is to be developed and distributed. I don't see why a software project _should_ care about global warming, minorities, state policies and other issues outside of its scope. It could, and it can be a good thing to do, but it doesn't need to.
It feels wrong to me, though, to see AI being used in kernel development, as I see the trouble it causes on regular projects.
> Looking at it from another angle: how many tons of CO₂ added to the atmosphere or liters of fresh water supplies disrupted is a tolerable price for a better code review?
Fewer than if a human had done it without AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48941143
I guess that means he should advocate for more use of AI for Linux dev! ;-)
He should, but you'll never get these free software wingnuts to see logic. They back-rationalize everything from ideologically drawn conclusions.
And they're driven by fear--fear of being replaced. This is one reason why open source projects are limiting use of LLMs. LLMs finally make software free! Or at least, much cheaper.
In reality, these reactionary anti-AI policies mean that users are private forking OSS projects, improving them with AI, and not contributing the changes back, making the original OSS project even more irrelevant over time.
I'm ambivalent about the impact of AI on society with respect to Sashiko, but that is the weak argument to make against AI code review.
The strong argument to make is that AI code review sucks. It does a bad job. It denies there are bugs that you have personally verified exists, questions the reason for the patch existing based on this denial, and then demands you create a giant scaffolding of tests to prove to the AI that the bug exists and that your patch will fix it. It is rude to do that to someone contributing their free time to help your project. And yes, I have forked one project as a result of this already.
AI code review will atomize your community with great speed. Beware.
I do not see how AI could be legally used on a GPL project.
But if you want to use a non-AI OS, NetBSD banned the use of AI. Maybe some of the talent will move over there. They can sure use the help.
As for AI in Linux, I am on the fence about that, but since Linux is pretty much funded/owned by large corporations, AI being forced on Linux is no surprise at all.
Are you a lawyer or an interlectual-property legal expert?
Because if so, please, please elaborate on
> I do not see how AI could be legally used on a GPL project.
Too many people "believe" or "are convinced" about matters with AI and Open Source without any backup or sources.
As I stated in another comment;
when you license code under the GNU GPLv2 (as you are doing whenever you contribute to the kernel), you are making an overt intellectual property claim. Unless you include attribution back to another GNU GPLv2 (or compatible) source that you are copying from, you are asserting that all the code you've just contributed is work that you have a the full legal copy-right to distribute and (re-)license.
However, if non-trivial code contributions are made by LLMs, that cannot be ensured (even if the user intends for it to be the case), as LLMs will never be able to consistently and correctly attribute the source of their code (not to mention a lot of it was illegal to train on to begin with but that's besides the point).
An LLM could very easily reproduce code from a project which is incompatible with the GNU GPLv2, and not only will it be illegally integrated into the kernel source, but the contributor is actually falsely claiming it as their own original work.
> Are you a lawyer or an intellectual-property legal expert?
Appeal to authority - we are free to comment on this matter irrespective of our vocation/education.
I'm not a lawyer, but based on everything I've read on the topic I think there's a solid argument that there are legitimate questions about the use of copyrighted material in training data, and whether or not the output of an LLM should be considered a derived work. As I googled it, it seems like courts have mostly called it OK but maybe this matter isn't 100% settled or converged upon a single answer.
Because you can't slap a copyright on AI output.
It's because, at least in the US, AI generated code cannot be protected by copyright.
<https://www.copyright.gov/ai/>
<https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...>
The Office concludes that, given current generally available technology, prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output.
Linus' statement that Linux is not political is strange. It started as a resistance project and used GPL for ideological reasons.
Linus himself was made to sign the corporation-enforced CoC and "retreat" for "counseling".
He came back a changed man. Since then I've only see him a) use the CoC as a weapon for the old boys and b) parrot any current mainstream or corporate line.
That includes COVID vaccines, overt anti-Russian statements (when not warranted) and now AI. Would he still give Ndivia the finger? I doubt it.
These Gen-X millionaires cling to their positions and I'm sure the Linux Foundation has a well oiled HR department. Ted Tso also already interfered pro AI in the Debian discussion, where the pro-AI resolution is also championed by Canonical shills.
You can't fork, but you can use BSD.
Drew, there will be new jobs.
Also, the open models are a great alternative to the datacenter ones.
I imagine AI will go towards the local models more when the bubble pops.
This is an important conversation to have and we should pretty clearly about what the issues are.
I didn't see any objection to LLM assisted development in the abstract. The objection is to relying on proprietary AI providers in general, and Gemini in particular, via Shashiko. The problem is that kernel contributions could become gated by hyperscalers who can draw on compute power normal people can't access.
Devault mentions data centers' carbon emissions and water usage. I find both of these objections to be distractions. It's not that carbon emissions don't matter. Keeping greenhouse gasses in check is incredibly important. But there are far more productive ways to cut carbon emissions than to block data centers. Heavy industry consumes far more electricity than data centers, for less economic value. This is even truer for water use. If carbon emissions is a major concern (as it should be), there are better targets to go after than data centers.
A more compelling argument is the danger that the Linux kernel becomes something that's effectively controlled by proprietary AI providers: Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, etc. The photo of tech company leaders at Trump's inauguration underscores their lack of any moral compass.
But if AI-driven kernel development is actually useful and productive, that's going to be hard to turn down. If you believe that LLM use is technically counter-productive, then this whole AI thing is a bubble and you can just wait for it to pop. If you believe that LLMs can be technically productive if used correctly, and the drawbacks are entirely social, then it means giving up something technically useful. That is a real cost.
I think Linus is right here: it would be hard for regular kernel developers to coordinate a fork of the project. It might not be that hard for the hyperscalers to simply fork Linux. They would still release the source code under the GPL, but nobody would be able to keep up with it. Ultimately, this could doom the human-written version of the kernel to irrelevance as most people switch to the faster/stronger/harder LLM-derived fork.
Maybe a reasonable medium would be to insist on using an open model for code review instead of depending on Gemini or any proprietary model.
tl;dr Kernel devs should prompt less because it uses up water or something.
Repeat after me: you can't put the cat back in the bag. Pandora's box is open. Sucks, but you have to learn to live with the reality that most developers will use AI to write code from now on.
How do I know if comments like this come from a real person or a bot?
Your suggestion that "anything popular cannot be morally wrong" is proposterous. It feels like you're trying to bait people into arguing with you in a way I associate with bot spam.
But on the off change you're a real person - I will politely say - just because something is useful and popular doesn't meant it doesn't have negative externalities and doesn't mean people shouldn't fight to make it better.
Improving emissions standards is important even though lots of people drive cars. The same can absolutely be true of AI.
> Sucks, but you have to learn to live with the reality that most developers will use AI to write code from now on.
No I don't. I can urge them to actually do their jobs and not just turn out slop, while refusing to use the slop machine myself.
This is a really disingenuous way to characterize the article (CO2 and global warming were much more of a focus than water, so your "or something" is doing a lot of work).
Furthermore your comment ignores key arguments in the article, particularly the argument that contributors should not be forced to participate in AI-based ceremonies such as LLM code review that they may object to on personal ethical grounds.
There are many arguments one could make in favor of keeping AI around and using it, but your "argument" here is just about the lousiest and most naive argument one could possibly make, and shows a complete lack of empathy and understanding from your end.
plz dont wreck a good thing, keep ai well away from linux.
Torvalds' statement was incredibly disingenuous and rather sad. Every single commit is making a legal and political claim. Each commit is saying "this code is my original copyrighted work, and I am licensing it to the world per the requirements of the GNU GPLv2" (or "this code is someone else's work which was licensed under a compatible license, and I am integrating it into this GNU GPLv2 project").
That's not social warrior, that's simple facts. We don't need to try and guess motives or reasoning for people's contributions - that doesn't matter. What we have is an explicit declaration by virtue of the license, that the code being provided can legally be included in the GNU GPLv2 licensed "Linux" kernel. But with LLM generated code, this legal claim is dubious at best. For trivial (!= simple) code, one can probably argue that the LLM code will not be violating anyone's copyright, however for anything remotely novel, unless you are 100% certain that all of the training data was GPLv2 or compatible, it is not legally safe to use - and aside from that, even if all the training data was compatible with the license, the LLM will virtually always fail to properly attribute the source of its output, which is a requirement of - as far as I can tell - every license compatible with the GNU GPLv2. I cannot share GPL'd code and misrepresent it as my original work, I still have to make clear that it was someone else's creation.
LLM generated code is a ticking time bomb, and is going to poison projects.
Yes, it is possible to do this already without LLMs, but not by accident. A developer would have to make a conscious decision to violate someone's license in the past. Now it can happen without anyone being the wiser.
And as someone who very much uses GNU GPL licensed software because of its license, this worries me for the future of software. On technical merits, it doesn't matter, but if you care at all about the artful expression of software, as well as honesty about who created what, this should concern you.
> LLM generated code is a ticking time bomb, and is going to poison projects.
Given the recent Anthropic ruling and OAI settlements, and the general stance of courts to look the other way when it comes to LLM use, I think an exemption for LLM-based software will be handwaved into existence (to my regret.)