Linux creator Linus Torvalds: AI is useless: it's '90% marketing' while he ignores AI for now

Linux creator Linus Torvalds says that AI at this stage of the game is '90% marketing' with gigantic industry hype, and only '10% reality' right now.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds: AI is useless: it's '90% marketing' while he ignores AI for now
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Gaming Editor
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TL;DR: Linux creator Linus Torvalds criticized AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA for having "buggy" hardware and expressed skepticism about the AI industry's hype, stating it's "90% marketing and 10% reality." He believes AI will eventually change the world but currently chooses to ignore it due to the industry's focus on marketing over substance. Torvalds predicts it may take another five.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has come out blasting AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA recently calling their hardware "buggy" and now has said that the AI industry is full of it and that it's "90% marketing" and "10% reality".

During a recent interview at the Open Source Summit with TFIR, Torvalds talked about the hype surrounding AI, and how the technology has been shadowed by the overwhelming marketing of tech giants (of which I agree).

He said: "I think AI is really interesting and I think it is going to change the world. 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 because I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position, and its 90% marketing and 10% reality. And, in 5 years, things will change and at that point, we will see what of the AI is getting used for real workloads".

Torvalds isn't wrong here, AI isn't doing much so far... and, there are trillions of dollars in the market, and it will be worth many more times that in the future. Every big tech company is pushing AI into their products -- AMD, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc -- so we'll see if it does indeed take another 5 years as the Linux creator predicted, for AI to be really useful in our lives.

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Anthony joined TweakTown in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of tech products. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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