Torvalds ignores AI hype
Linus Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, has been speaking about Artificial Intelligence, according to The Register; and he’s not impressed by what he has witnessed to date.
Speaking at the Open Source Summit in Vienna last month, Torvalds was asked for his views on modern technologies, specifically Generative Artificial Intelligence, usually abbreviated to GenAI.
His reply included the following remarks:
“I think AI is really interesting and I think it is going to change the world and at the same time I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don’t want to go there, so my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it.
I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position and it’s 90 percent marketing and ten percent reality and in five years things will change and at that point we’ll see what of the AI is getting used for real workloads.
His remarks about the hype cycle are particularly relevant. Those with very long memories will remember the Dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early two thousands, while those with less of a broad sweep of time may recall the more recent episode of overwhelming enthusiasm generated by the marketing of so-called cloud computing, about which the FSFE was particularly blunt in its opinion (posts passim) – just other people’s computers.