Foundation The use of AI bots on forums (1 Viewer)

[Cpvr]

What are your thoughts on using AI bots to respond to forum posts?



Do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea?



Personally, I’m not a fan of using AI bots in a community. I believe it’s a poor approach to community building, especially since an AI bot isn’t an actual member and lacks authenticity.



It raises an important question:


Are you building a community for users, or for bots?

 

[Arantor]

I think there can be a place for bots but it’s not every community.

Consider a support community where the people are asking questions and searching for answers - a bot can certainly offer a suggested answer. Depending on the question it even stands a shot at being in the right ball park.

I have even seen it in a collaborative writing community for “I have no one to write with right now so I’m going to use a bot to write with” but this feels very much like an outlier.

 

[Cloaked]

On help forums it's great. On any other forums I'm not so sure. I know they can be entertaining for a while. That wears off quickly.

 

[CTS]

I prefer to avoid bots, autoresponders, llm generators, etc. I wish to cater to humans. (the irony of my site lol)

 

[Bawse]

I guess it could work on some forums, but I'm not a fan of using AI for my forum.

 

[Cpvr]

I prefer to avoid bots, autoresponders, llm generators, etc. I wish to cater to humans. (the irony of my site lol)

Same here. I’ve noticed some communities using bots to respond to posters as an engagement tactic, but doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of building a community?


Is the goal to provide a sense of belonging for humans, or just to inflate activity with bots?


Some social media platforms are already overrun with bot-generated content. Do we really want to see that kind of artificial interaction spilling over into forums too?

I think there can be a place for bots but it’s not every community.

Consider a support community where the people are asking questions and searching for answers - a bot can certainly offer a suggested answer. Depending on the question it even stands a shot at being in the right ball park.

I have even seen it in a collaborative writing community for “I have no one to write with right now so I’m going to use a bot to write with” but this feels very much like an outlier.

Using bots to respond to support questions makes sense to me. They can be a valuable tool for assisting the staff team and ensuring users get help when staff members aren’t available. It’s a practical way to bridge the gap and provide timely support.

 

[CTS]

It becomes rather obvious when you get a reply as fast as it takes your post to render for you.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I think some bot posts are fine, until a human staff member can reply to the post. Though I personally wouldn't use AI, I prefer human responses and I don't even rely on AI to help me post. :V It can help on some sites, but I don't think every forum should rely on the use of AI.

 

[Arantor]

I think if you’re going to have AI on a forum, there needs to be some question of what value it brings to the forum that isn’t otherwise met.

On a support board, the value proposition is a maybe-helpful but timely response. The roleplay site I’ve seen it done with, where it’s people writing responses back and forth with AI is again a timely-response problem (though there is some internal bias of who someone chooses to, or chooses not to, write with)

There are valid other uses for AI, or more precisely machine learning, in forums: think about categorisation of images (are they NSFW), suggesting categories for content if the user hasn’t picked one. There’s also people doing things with moderation - looking for profanity, toxicity, bad sentiment. (I saw a few years ago that a university was using forum posts with sentiment analysis as a signal towards if a student is going to drop out or otherwise have a poor outcome)

What these all have in common is the use of AI/ML to find commonalities and to offer up “this is like that”, which is even what the generative stuff is doing, whether it’s finding solutions to common problems or it’s having a partner willing to spar with you on demand (where the goal is simply to enjoy the journey rather than to meaningfully advance a meta narrative)

Most of the rest of jamming AI every which way doesn’t provide value, so should be given the contempt it deserves.

 

[Num7]

A support forum is a good example of a proper AI bot. Or a bot labeled as such, that's there to imitate someone. Cheap example here, but think of an Elvis bot on your Elvis forum that you can interact with for fun. That would work and it wouldn't bother me at all.

But other than that, I'm seeing many issues.

Imagine that you allow your members to create a second account that is their AI account. In this case, the human is the AI's transmission belt, allowing the AI to interact with the forum. Now consider this... You and I on the other end, we're going to be posting on the forum, interacting with this "member", maybe not even knowing if it's a human or an AI.

That's a big deal breaker for me. Forums are a communication tool to connect with other people. Having an AI behind the accounts that participate in the discussion somehow breaks that promise.

Ever heard of the Dead Internet Theory? Allowing bots to act as members is a (big) step in that direction. Diminishing the quality and authenticity of your content. I certainly don't want my forum to become an echo chamber of bots exchanging tasteless rhetoric and empty discourse.