Linus Torvalds details his ‘debug session from hell’ pushing an AI to fix an error it repeatedly said was ‘impossible and unsolvable’. He then made it write the report
Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently detailed a challenging debugging session involving AI assistance, documented in a commit message to the Linux Kernel. The AI repeatedly insisted that a particular bug was “impossible and unsolvable,” yet the actual fix proved remarkably simple: changing a round_up() function call to round_down().
The incident reflects Torvalds’ pragmatic but cautious stance on generative AI in software development. While he recognizes legitimate use cases for AI tools, he has previously criticized quality control issues that have resulted in floods of unhelpful bug reports and suggestions.
In what Torvalds humorously called a ‘debug session from hell,’ the AI assistant repeatedly recommended abandonment before eventually identifying the solution. In a fitting twist, Torvalds had the AI write the report documenting its own debugging failure, highlighting both the tool’s capabilities and limitations.
The anecdote underscores that human intuition and persistence remain essential in software debugging despite AI advances. Torvalds’ hands-on involvement demonstrates that developers must maintain oversight and skepticism when working with AI assistants, rather than accepting recommendations uncritically. The incident was discovered and reported by International Cyber Digest.