@ismh86 / @MacSparky What are your thoughts on Discourse AI, in respect to this forum?
Personally I’m not a fan of AI, but I know many members here are. I’m curious though how good summaries of some of the longer topics here would be.
I do “worry” about “privacy” / “content ownership” (did not read yet whether the processing of posts will be on your Discourse server or on an AI company’s server), but on the other hand I think those AI companies will probably already scrape this forum anyway.
Like you, I am not a fan of this constant drive to infantalise users - have we really reached the stage that a forum post or thread can be too long, so that we need an Algorithmical Idiot nanny to save our poor little brains the effort of reading the words in context to judge who’s talking sense or not?
I’m not quite as robust as @brookter in my wish to keep AI away from this forum 
The Solution feature allows an answer to a question the OP raised brings it to the top next to the question.
I like to read the whole discussion, summarisation by an AI or a person would remove a lot of the nuance and valid points which I like to consider, even i they don’t match my own.
I’m here to learn as much as to help and summarisation (IMHO) would remove those opportunities.
Summarisation by AI usually means ”shortening” the text, without the ability to pick up on the most important findings, topics or opinions. So, basically quite useless imo. (Fully respecting that others may have other experiences.)
As for ownership, I have always considered any text I post on public Internet discussion forums like this as becoming part of the public domain.
I “discovered” this feature because the Trakt forum has this feature enabled, although they never asked for consent to process our posts (as far as I know).
I don’t think the potential value (if there is any) is in the summary of a single post, but might be in summaries of multi-page threads.
I was exaggerating (slightly) for comic effect 
I agree completely!
Any thread over a certain length (for some forums it’s about 3 posts…) inevitably has:
Joking apart (and a serious answer to @rob’s point, which I do take seriously): long threads rarely stay on topic, and often they contain wildly inaccurate information – well-meaning or not – from posters whose knowledge it’s very difficult to assess.
We, as humans, have a chance of ignoring most of it to pick out the reliable information, but how could an AI? It’s just pattern matching, and when the majority of info in the thread is likely to be dross, won’t it highlight the dross on frequency grounds? If we hive off our responsibility for making these judgements to AI, how do people learn to judge well in future?
If they’re using it (with AI) for basically the same purposes they’re already using your data for to host the forum, it’s not a change of use (on the assumption that unlike Reddit they’re not selling the posts to a 3rd party. And with Discourse being self hosted rather than centrally, Discourse as an originations should not have access to or rights to the data on each forum.
Of course all this depends on Software licensing and user agreements.
If it’s a user-driven AI, I could see value. Consider:
“Hey dingus, read through this 500-reply thread called ‘suggestions for a task manager’ and list all options given, along with the number of people that are suggesting each one.”
That would bring value.
If it’s just a random summary, I agree that it’s probably not a great representation of the details of the thread.
I hope MPU won’t enable this.
Just think how much more efficient our forum users would be if we ditched all the reading and let AI write everything! We could all not-read hundreds of forums every day!
This.
LLMs are at there ‘best’ when user invoked.
You can still read the threads, even if an AI summarises them.
I’ve been doing this for years, btw, using WI - Wifely Intelligence. My wife reads incredibly quickly, and I’m a slow reader, but we have similar tastes in books. For the last 25 years she has read books then summed them up and told me whether she thinks I would like them or not. It’s an incredible time saver, and confirms to me that I married well
I think it might be interesting and educational to try it out for maybe a month and see what people think. It might be great or it might be a dud, but if we don’t try it we won’t really know.
That’s probably the best type of “agentic intelligence” currently available 
Absolutely nailed it — both the comic exaggeration and the serious point.
I think you’re right to highlight how quickly threads spiral into tangents, arguments, and inside jokes. It’s part of the charm of online discussion but also a minefield for anyone genuinely trying to learn something. And while it is often possible for humans to mentally filter out the noise, that skill comes with practice — and even then, we all fall for convincing nonsense sometimes.
Your point about responsibility is key. If we rely too heavily on summarisation — especially from tools that don’t really understand but just reflect patterns — we risk outsourcing our judgment entirely. And like any muscle, if you don’t use it, it weakens.
So yes, summaries might be convenient, but they shouldn’t become a substitute for engaging with complexity.
Nothing needs to be enabled for users to summarise. Judge for yourself:
The discussion on the Mac Power Users forum titled “Discourse AI (on this forum?)” centers around the potential integration of AI summarization features into the community platform.
Key Points from the Discussion:
• Skepticism Towards AI Summarization: Several members express reservations about using AI to summarize forum threads. Concerns include the potential loss of nuanced discussions and the oversimplification of complex topics. 
• Privacy and Content Ownership: There are apprehensions regarding where and how the AI processes the forum data, with questions about whether the processing occurs on Discourse servers or external AI company servers. 
• Potential Benefits: Some participants acknowledge that AI summarization could be beneficial for lengthy threads, aiding users in quickly grasping the main points without reading through extensive discussions. 
• User Control and Implementation: The idea of user-initiated AI summaries is discussed, suggesting that giving users the option to generate summaries on-demand might be a more acceptable approach.
Overall, the forum members are weighing the advantages of improved accessibility and efficiency against the risks of losing depth and personal engagement in discussions. The consensus leans towards cautious consideration, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the forum’s integrity and the quality of interactions.
You’re putting a lot of faith in the value of forum posts. I’m doubtful that my intellect is at risk by not reading an entire 3 page post on a linux forum that descended into a flame war, just to find the solution to a disk mounting problem mentioned on page 2.
This. I just feed the thread link to my GPT with a shortcut prompt to summarize and give me the best argument for and against.
Most participants are skeptical about enabling Discourse AI for automatically summarizing or analyzing forum content. Common concerns include loss of nuance, potential inaccuracies, and privacy. A few see targeted, user-driven uses as valuable, but overall the consensus leans toward “if it inserts generic summaries, it’ll do more harm than good.”
Best argument for “If it’s a user-driven AI, I could see value. Consider: ‘Hey AI, read through this 500-reply thread called ‘suggestions for a task manager’ and list all options given, along with how many people suggested each one.’ That would bring value. If it’s just a random summary, I agree it’s probably not a great representation of the details.”
This captures why targeted, on-demand features are useful: they save time without replacing human judgment.
Best argument against: “Summarisation by AI usually means ‘shortening’ the text, without the ability to pick up on the most important findings, topics or opinions. So, basically quite useless imo. … Long threads rarely stay on topic, and often contain wildly inaccurate or irrelevant information. We, as humans, have a chance of ignoring most of it to pick out reliable information, but how could an AI? If we hive off our responsibility for making these judgments to AI, how do people learn to judge well in future?”
This points to the core risk: AI could amplify noise, obscure nuance, and erode critical thinking.