TudyBOT Feedback & Discussion Thread

[Antiocheggers]

Dead against it. It's not that I'm hysterical about AI. It's not that I don't use it on a daily basis. It's just given the stated aim of BYC is community above information. I don't think it belongs here.
As saysfaa points out, if a person wants a quick answer to a question then Google might be your friend so the bot isn't providing a new service.
My view is it's a toy and a long long way from any sort of intelligent learning device for people.
I'll get very upset when one of my posts gets deleted because I'm rude to the bot.

I have to agree I'm not for AI. I come to BYC for information on rising chicken. If I need Information out side of " rising chicken" i ll use Google. I've made friends here that have taught me alot on subject. So with that I don't think the AI has that personal touch I've enjoyed through the community.

 

[Shabby Chic-Hens]

I believe that @TudyBOT should stay.

 

[My Three Chicks]

I really like TudyBOT! I'm fairly new (2 years) as a chicken mama and I have a lot of basic questions that sometimes I don't want to ask the community or sometimes get no response. I think TudyBOT is awesome because she answers all the questions pulling in a number of resources. She's a keeper!

 

[Sussex19]

I personally do not want AI, except as a bit of fun to mess around with.
But as long as 'she' stays out of where its not wanted, then I don't have any objections to having AI.
One question I have, is if I call out and correct inaccuracies, will 'she' respond better next time that question is asked?

 

[Shadrach]

I have to agree I'm not for AI. I come to BYC for information on rising chicken. If I need Information out side of " rising chicken" i ll use Google. I've made friends here that have taught me alot on subject. So with that I don't think the AI has that personal touch I've enjoyed through the community.

I must have mellowed a bit. I hadn't really appreciated the community until a couple of years ago. I like reading the differing view points even when I don't agree with them. Keeping my own thread ticking over with minimum verbal violence has been a great learning experience for me.

There are messages from computers on the trains, on the buses, in the shops not to mention the bots that are constantly turning up on my web sites. I'm not so naive or that much of a Luddite to want nothing to do with bots, but I come to BYC to talk to people, not bots.
There are all those little insights in many of the well written posts, that give one confidence that the person you are communicating with has some emotional investment in their creatures and some experience in dealing with a similar problem.

While it is true that the bot is only a tool one doesn't have to think very hard to come up with other tools that can and have done considerable damage.

 

[nuthatched]

I

I really like TudyBOT! I'm fairly new (2 years) as a chicken mama and I have a lot of basic questions that sometimes I don't want to ask the community or sometimes get no response. I think TudyBOT is awesome because she answers all the questions pulling in a number of resources. She's a keeper!

There's a search box in the corner, I use it for all the "I should know this already" questions. Just from reading yesterday's tudy thread proved not all her info was right, she's just a search engine for specifically this forum.

 

[R2elk]

I personally do not want AI, except as a bit of fun to mess around with.
But as long as 'she' stays out of where its not wanted, then I don't have any objections to having AI.
One question I have, is if I call out and correct inaccuracies, will 'she' respond better next time that question is asked?

Not necessarily, based on yesterday's responses. It gave the same wrong answer to the same question even after having been corrected and acknowledging the correction the first time.

 

[Corbdee]

One quick note:

*IF* we decide to keep @TudyBOT around, a BIG question is where would she be "allowed" to be called / invited to participate?

My concern with limiting her to just her own "corner" is that we'll then run into one of my biggest gripes since creating forums 18 years ago:

Having a huge jumbled mess of topics in one "general" category!

I really dislike having coop-design threads, funny chat threads, chicken emergency threads, breed questions, etc., all in one section of the forum. It makes organization, discovery, engagement, search, etc. a nightmare.

So, my inclination would be to allow @TudyBOT to be called-upon in a responsible way by ONLY those that want her to engage, in all the sections of the site. That way, if someone wants to ask her about knitting, that can be in the hobbies section. Ask her to write chicken jokes... in the games/jokes section. A quick chicken emergency help at 3am... the emergencies section.

I like that idea. Or you could do a bunch of subsections inside of Tudy's Corner like you have in certain forums (like Incubating & Hatching >> Hatch-A-Longs)?

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

I pulled some quotes, comments, etc. from the other thread and wanted to give my 2 cents here

Is there a danger that people will just accept the bots answer and the possibility for discussion and differing

Yes, for sure! It's very similar to the danger we currently experience when people (with good intentions) provide bad information on raising chickens, and then people follow-it without doing more detailed research.

IMO, the answer is to always have MORE diverse / varied sources of information, and develop the skills to analyze, interpret, evaluate, and summarize the information in a way that has the highest probability of the information being correct and helpful.

The current AIs don't have any true understanding of what they're saying, instead they essentially just predict which word comes next without regard for what's conceptually possible or impossible.

This is spot-on, and why there is a significant "hallucination" problem. I'm confident that this will improve over time... how much and how fast is up for debate

A big part of this forum to me is the social aspect. Greeting people, sympathising with people, helping them by advising sure, but also being a community in other ways.
I think the bots will enhance the experience, not take away from it.

1000000% agree!!! Our intent is to provide yet another tool for peeps to use or not use. Just like people thought radio, then TV, then the internet would be the end of "human connection", each of them has improved it. Heck, some of my best friends are ones I met on the interwebs and BYC. YAY technology!!!

(that doesn't mean that AI is a 100% perfect panacea, but I also don't want to just assume adding an AI tool to BYC will destroy the wonderful benefits and social connections we have on BYC.)

TudyBOT is just another tool in the arsenal of knowledge. Sort of a compilation of the entire library without having to know WHICH book to look in for information.

As with any tool there is potential for misuse. That is why tools have warning labels.

I am confident that IF TudyBOT remains active there will be a warning/caution label included as text in EVERY response.

This can't be repeated enough

Please note that as with any member there IS an ignore feature in TudyBOTs profile. People CAN ignore TudyBOT.

This is a great idea! Have any of you members done this? Please let us know how the experience has been for you!

I personally do not trust AI enough to ask it a question about my hurt/sick chicken. I'd rather get answers from real people with actual experience. AI may have access to all the same information on the internet that those people have, but it doesn't, and can't, have hands-on experience.

However, I do think it's up to each member whether or not they tag Tudy for emergencies, or anything else for that matter.

Yes! A healthy distrust of information provided on the internet is a GREAT way to live (even before AI was invented)!!!

It's about the whole site being available to it.

Did you mean that you have issues with the bots having access to BYC? If so, this has nothing to do with us installing or not installing TudyBOT. BYC is publicly accessible, so until we put every post behind a login, robots from around the world are/will be constantly crawling/"spidering" everything posted.

If it is kept to one section, it is less likely to break down the community. I haven't read all the posts but the ones I read sounded like expansion to other areas was at least a potential goal.

Correct, I mentioned the reasons behind not having it contained to just one section here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/tudybot-feedback-discussion-thread.1571925/post-26695289

Why was the trudybot pole thread closed?
So nobody could give thier own opinions?

Because our team didn't feel that a pole was appropriate in timing or helpful in what we're trying to accomplish. While we value feedback and take the health of the community as our #1 priority, at the end of the day our decisions are not up for a vote. If we followed that process over the years, BYC would have floundered years ago.

I choose to put my trust in the moderators and staff. If they considered TudyBOT eligible to be in a certain corner of the forum, I stand with their decision. If at any point do they decide that TudyBOT is not welcome, I stand by that decision too

That's appreciated! Nobody cares about and is as deeply invested in BYC's health as I am. I'm not about to do things that will have an overall negative short or long-term negative impact on our community.

Also, nothing is set in stone. If we turn it on and it's good, we can leave it. If it's on and it's bad, we turn it off. It's literally one easy slider button:

To add on to this, for the past several days, the Staff have been spiritedly debating, discussing and heatedly pounding cyber desks with fists in making sure this was something we wanted for the community. Don't think we aren't currently discussing the opinions you are expressing even now. We want what's best for the community overall, knowing there will be those that don't like it, AND THAT'S OK.

Like the old saying goes

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”​

We do our best to balance that.

Yes, this

 

[Corbdee]

X2

I was really hoping it was an April Fools gag and not a real implementation.
While she provides good information, there's a lack of walk-you-through the process and learned experience or opinion that's most situations call for.
And I also noticed yesterday that a large percentage of bycers were too busy playing with the new 'toy' to help any new threads.

Like, she has potential but for now, she might make a decent auto pilot for threads posted at off hours.
Atleast she give usually correct forum available info and not the average Google answer.

This is a very good point, we did get a little carried away but to be fair it was her first day, I can see us eventually calming down and using her for mostly information. Plus everyone sometimes will forget about other threads for awhile even when they're in the RR threads.