Linus Torvalds, the founder and principal maintainer of the Linux kernel, used artificial intelligence to trace and fix a complex bug in the Intel Xe graphics driver; an event notable because Torvalds has not been personally coding for years and mainly reviews and integrates other developers' pull requests.
According to ITNA, this bug, which was a type of memory corruption, produced what Torvalds himself called a "hellish debugging session."
The role of AI in this process
The AI tool Torvalds used handled a large portion of time-consuming and repetitive tasks; including adding debugging tools to the code, analyzing the results of each run, and ultimately writing the final commit message for this patch.
However, the collaboration process with AI was not flawless.
Torvalds revealed that the AI system several times declared the problem "unsolvable" and suggested that instead of continuing the investigation, a report should simply be written. But Torvalds did not accept this assessment and, by insisting on his approach, eventually succeeded in discovering and fixing the bug.
He wrote in his notes about this patch that AI can be considered his "tireless assistant," although he emphasized that using it is not as simple as "handing the job to AI and going to get coffee."
Gradual adaptation to the technology
This action is viewed as part of Torvalds' gradual change in attitude toward AI. He, who previously approached the use of AI in software development with skepticism, has in recent months and during discussions over drafting guidelines for accepting AI-based contributions to the Linux project explicitly stated that Linux is "not an anti-AI project" and considers the technology a tool like other tools available to developers.
According to ZDNET, under the current Linux project policy, code generated with the help of AI can be merged into the kernel, provided that the person using these tools takes full responsibility for any problems arising from it.
Torvalds' recent experience can be seen as a practical example of this approach: AI did part of the work, but the final decision-making and approval of the solution remained the responsibility of a human.
This patch is set to be included in Linux 7.3 and will also be backported to the kernel's stable branches.