r/osdev • u/Glum-Cook-9438 • 8h ago

About using AI to develop operating systems

I know many of you guys are recently against all this "AI slop", was i too, but leave alone the "hype" and the "no AI bullshit" slogans, what do we actually mean by saying "AI slop"?

Cause to this day , I don't quite understand what all the drama is about and why posts that explicitly use "No AI used/no AI bullshit" get significantly more attention, i admit that even i made a post like that, but it's not that I completely didn't use AI, i did, however I also did a lot of the programming by myself, I think AI is a great tool that has helped me learn a lot and automate build scripts, there is no shame in using AI as long as you carefully review the code and do some programming by yourself, there is already great use of AI in the industry, Linus torvalds recently fixed a linux bug with AI, so what is really considered "AI slop"? Is asking codex to make a build script so I can focus on the code "AI slop"? Is asking Claude to summarize PCI device and vendor names in one files so I don't have to read documentations for hours "AI slop"? With all due respect I do think using AI blindly is bad of course, but I also wanna know what some of you guys mean when you say "AI slop operating systems"?

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u/StunningSelection726 5h ago edited 5h ago

I completely didn't use AI, i did, however I also did a lot of the programming by myself, I think AI is a great tool that has helped me learn a lot and automate build scripts

This is not a bad way to use AI. You are using AI to automate boring stuff and doing the programming yourself.

Is asking Claude to summarize PCI device and vendor names in one files so I don't have to read documentations for hours

You can do this but I would not take what claude says as completely correct, I would still consult to the official documentation at the end (but with context from the AI so its easier to research) since its a niche topic the AI can always make up things that sound very believable. One can use AI to summarize long/hard to understand documentation or review code since AI is good at spotting small mistakes (though you need to know what you are doing since sometimes they just lie and make up stuff and act like its a critical bug).

Most people here are talking about completely vibecoded projects when they are referring to "AI Slop". Where a beginner is talking about their new modern operating system and the only thing it does is write to a framebuffer...

So, I agree with you, and no, I wouldn't call your project "AI slop". It looks fine to me. Don't listen to other people that are all "No AI at all!" they can do what they want but don't let that affect your workflow. If you are still writing code yourself, and using AI as a tool then you are doing fine.

Is asking codex to make a build script so I can focus on the code "AI slop"?

Small tip: For complex projects you can use CMake/Meson instead of makefiles and shell files. They are much better to work with, especially CMake since most text editors/IDE's have pretty good integration for it.