Quoting Linus Torvalds

Simon Willison's Blog 08/22/26, 09:04 PM News

ai-assistance debugging linux open-source torvalds software-development

Summary

Linus Torvalds describes a challenging debug session where an AI assistant provided significant help but also showed limitations by suggesting to give up, which he overcame through persistence.

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# A quote from Linus Torvalds Source: [https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/22/linus-torvalds/](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/22/linus-torvalds/) 22nd August 2026 > And this was a debug session from hell, enormously helped by an AI doing much of the grunt\-work\. I'd like to call it my tireless helper, but the AI several times stated flat out that this was impossible and unsolvable and that we should just write a report about it\. I suspect those things have been trained by people who may not be quite as stubborn as I am\. But while the AI was ready to give up several times, it did keep adding debug code and analyzing it faithfully when I pushed\. So credit where credit is due and I let the AI write the commit message above\. —[Linus Torvalds](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/818bebeb63dd6bf5f4e07e145f6cdbace520a34c),drm/xe: Don't hand out the flat CCS storage as usable VRAM

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