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Would AI be useful on the element14 Community?

Alanta Lee

We’re exploring whether AI could be useful on the element14 Community, and we’d love to hear what members think.

This is early thinking. We’re not looking at using AI to replace the Community, replace member generated content, or take away from the conversations that happen here. The value of the Community comes from real people sharing real experience, projects, reviews, questions and advice.

Instead, we’re interested in whether AI could support members in practical ways, particularly around finding, improving or understanding existing content.

For example, AI could potentially help with things like:

  • Finding relevant forum posts, projects, RoadTests, documentation or product information
  • Suggesting clearer titles for forum posts, blogs or projects so they are easier for others to find
  • Helping members structure a RoadTest Review and make sure they have covered the key points
  • Translating Community content
  • Suggesting related content, resources or next steps
  • Helping newer members ask clearer questions
  • Explaining technical concepts or terminology
  • Highlighting useful answers or discussions from across the Community

I’ll be honest, I’m not completely sold on AI being added everywhere just for the sake of it. A lot of companies seem to be putting AI into every platform and product at the moment, and sometimes it’s genuinely useful, but other times it can feel a bit unnecessary or forced. That’s why I’m really interested to hear what people here think. If AI was ever used on the element14 Community, I’d want it to actually help members with real things, not get in the way of the conversations, projects and advice that make the Community valuable in the first place, and not necessarily be used to generate new content outright.

A few questions to kick off:

  • Where do you think AI could genuinely help on the Community?
  • What tasks or moments feel frustrating today that AI might improve?
  • Are there any AI features you would actively avoid or distrust?
  • Would you use AI to help find answers from existing discussions, projects or documentation?
  • Are there any examples from other sites or tools where AI has worked well, or badly, for you?
  • in reply to dougw

    Agree. Even as a "search engine" it could be detrimental. If someone is having an issue or wants to discuss a topic that has been discussed before, I would rather have them "accidentally" make a "duplicate" post (assuming they couldn't find the information with the regular search) than having an AI agent hallucinate a response for them or having them waste time browsing through "relevant" posts potentially identified by an AI.

    Worst case they will be redirected to the previous existing discussion. But it could also happen that new eyes will see the topic and maybe will chime in with a different perspective, a better solution, or new approaches/tools that didn't exist when the original discussion happened.

    So I don't think an AI-powered search has a place in a community-driven platform.

  • Interaction is the life blood of the forum. Even a better search engine will degrade interaction. You don't need a forum if you want to interact with an AI.

  • In our office, we have an AI that is trained on company data and serves as a chatbot inside the Teams application. Whenever we want to raise an IT concern or general queries, we type there, and it'll open the proper link to raise the IT request.Previously, it was much harder to locate where to raise such concerns, but it's much easier now. AI can answer the same questions without frustration.I believe such mundane activities can be offloaded to AI, like "Where to publish my article about the amazing project I did" or "I bought this product from xyz company, but I need some more information about it". If the user consents, the resolved queries can be published as an automated post.

  • I like AI for the first 3 points,especially the first one.

    • As a smart assistant to help me find answers faster
    • Summarising long threads
    • Suggesting relevant projects, products, or next steps

    I dont take AI as gospel, but Im all for help finding the best bunny hole to go down :-) 

  • AI as an improved search engine might be OK.

    AI as a filter would be terrible - it is completely useless at this (although frequently used) because it doesn't understand anything. One of the great things about real human threads is the way they spark off new ideas, frequently without intending to.

    One of the true horrors of AI is the way it pollutes the web with (derivative and frequently garbled) "new" documents which make it much harder to find real and useful stuff. 

    MK