Welcome + You should reply to this thread right now!

Hello Future Community & AI Community Members!

Please reply to this thread with a quick introduction to yourself and (if you want!) your thoughts on the intersection of AI and Community.

Aaron, your Community Lead here! I've been in Community Management for 12 years, led Community teams, and done just about every type of Community Management you can think of.

Ironically (given the fact that I am starting this AI focused Community)... I don't really like text that is generated by AI. I think words like "demystify" and "delve" are massively overused and an immediate giveaway that a human didn't write the content. There's something "cheap" about reading something that wasn't written by a human.

People crave interaction with others, and interactions with an AI lacks that key human factor. It is my belief that AI can be a facilitator of conversations instead of the creator of the text we're reading. We're going to explore that in this group, and we'd love to have you be a part of it.

8 comments

1 year ago

Hi there Aaron, it's you, Aaron! Starting off the comments here with a sample intro.

I previously have led Community Teams and Autodesk, Square, and Procore. I'm most excited about, as I've mentioned, using AI to elevate human voices in Communities.

Aaron White

1 year ago

Hi Aaron, it's another Aaron!

I'm interested in where AI can be a beneficial tool while also maintaining proper boundaries and ensuring a human touch. I'd like to see where AI can enhance our lives, not necessarily serve as a replacement for the things humans are (and should be) better at than machines.

I've worked in Community at Anaplan, WalkMe, and now Alkami, and enjoy connecting with other community-minded individuals from all over!

1 year ago

Hello again Aaron! Stoked to have you join and love your perspective on AI. Enhance, not replace!

This group is so new, I'm curious, do you get an email notification when I reply here?

Martin Remy

1 year ago

Hi Aaron, I'm happy to have found your group and looking forward to learning and sharing with you all about the frontier of AI + Community.

The reason we're all talking about AI now is that thanks to LLMs, AI finally speaks our language. AI/ML was already pretty smart and could do surprising (but specialized) things like beating humans at chess or Go and flying helicopters backward. But now anyone can talk (or type) to an AI about anything! That's revolutionary and, like all revolutions, a bit disorienting. There are things to figure out. To add to the challenge, humans are notoriously bad at talking to each other. This is going to be fun. So what happens next?

Let's start with what we know:

Connection and community are essential for people.

What's needed to create connection and community? Here's my take:

Intent or interest
Organization
Place
Commitment

What do those things have in common? They are hard, and they require communicating with each other. Can AI make them easier for us? I think so:

AI can help us with the "blank page" problem, to get us over the hurdle of getting started by giving us ideas or rubber ducking with us to clarify our thoughts. Yes, AIs generate some annoying and sometimes predictably generic text, but so does my neighbor.
AI can search for us so that we can consider vastly more options than we could manually on our own.
AI can help us understand others by summarizing or paraphrasing things for us, so that we can learn more from each other.
AI can point out flaws and biases in our writing, so that we can all be less annoying than my neighbor.

What are you excited about or worried about in the age of LLMs coming into our conversations? What opportunities do you see for using them to facilitate more human connection?

I lead the AI team at Bevy. Our mission is to connect people and help them create lasting communities, and I'm eager to learn from you all how AI is and isn't going to be helpful.

1 year ago

Martin - This is an AWESOME response and I am so glad you're in the group.

Going to throw out some bullets in replies to what you've put forth here.

YES - LLMs are absolutely the reason we are seeing such an increase in excitement around AI. AI is finally accessible to us. Such a great reason to point this out.
I always feel that when AI folks mention LLMs, they need to make sure they are explaining what an LLM is. We are so early in adoption of this technology, we need to bring new folks along!
- An LLM is a Large Language Model.
- In simple terms, an LLM is a very advanced AI system that can understand and generate human-like language by learning from massive amounts of text data. This makes them powerful tools for various language-related applications.
I love the AI Rubber Duck analysis - especially when we consider AI as a rubber duck for anything, not just code.

1 year ago

What am I worried about?

AI for search is already a huge habit for me. The AI results generated by Google are already preventing me from clicking further on any questions.
I am wondering what the impact for this will be on Community/Forum page views and engagement.
People will get answers more easily, that's great, but they may not be forced to discover and/or participate in the forums where those discussions happen.

Martin Remy

12 months ago

That's a legitimate worry. Wouldn't it be nice if Google and Perplexity et al shared ad revenue with their sources.

In a community/forums context, how can we ensure that posters and commenters are properly credited (at least) and that there are still reasons to participate in an active discussion?

For crediting contributors, perhaps the summarization UX could explicitly credit commenters who contributed. For encouraging participation, what if the AI played debate moderator to ask specific follow-up questions pointing out gaps in the thread, and inviting people to jump in?

11 months, 1 week ago

That sounds like the right move! Perplexity is really good about citing sources in their search. If you're not using them, try them out!