In a word: Linus Torvalds never minces his words when asked to comment on open source support or the latest technology trends. The Finnish software engineer recently participated in an event focused on open source, where he had something to say about AI technology and “smart” algorithms.
Torvalds said the current state of AI technology is 90% marketing and 10% factual reality. The developer, who won Finland’s Millennium Technology Prize for creating the Linux kernel, was interviewed at the Open Source Summit held in Vienna, where he had the opportunity to speak about both the open source world and the latest technological trends.
THE franc The technologist said that modern generative AI services are an exciting development in machine learning technology and will eventually change the world. At the same time, he expressed dissatisfaction with the “hype cycle” that fuels too many AI-related initiatives and contributes to Nvidia’s incredibly high position. market assessments.
Linus Torvalds claims that AI will change the world, but currently it is 90% marketing and 10% reality, and it will take another 5 years to clearly understand what AI is really for. pic.twitter.com/6knFEfJbqf
– Tsarathoustra (@tsarnick) October 21, 2024
Everyone and their dog is currently talking about AI, or building an AI-based cloud service, or funding a multi-million dollar AI-focused startup somewhere in the world. Torvalds hates the hype cycle so much that he doesn’t even want to go there. The developer basically ignores anything related to AI, even though things will likely change drastically in a few years.
In five years, Torvalds said, generative algorithms and machine learning technologies will become much more useful and interesting. At that point, the whole world will be able to understand how AI can actually be used and what types of everyday workloads it can “accelerate”.
The creator of Linux is not the only one wary of modern AI capabilities, as Baidu’s CEO recently said. declaring that 99 percent of today’s “AI companies” will soon go the way of the (digital) dodo.
ChatGPT and similar services are great as a pure technology demonstration, Torvalds conceded, and they are obviously already in use in many areas and for different workloads. “But I really hate the hype cycle,” he said, and we couldn’t agree more.
During his interview in Vienna, Torvalds said that development in the open source community is now primarily driven by large companies rather than individual developers. It reinforced his idea about computer security, especially when it comes to faulty hardware components. Torvalds also said he prefers the C programming language to Rust, although the latter was specifically designed to make memory-related bugs and software security issues a thing of the past.
