Author Topic: Using AI to summarize a topic  (Read 7647 times)

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Offline eTobeyTopic starter

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Using AI to summarize a topic
« on: October 17, 2025, 07:49:38 am »
Hi,
i tried to use chatgpt to summarize a topic. It told me, it cant, because of the robots.txt.

Is there a way to get around it? I dont mind if its a little bit of work.
"Sometimes, after talking with a person, you want to pet a dog, wave at a monkey, and take off your hat to an elephant."(Maxim Gorki)

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Online RoGeorge

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2025, 09:08:52 am »
I dont mind if its a little bit of work.

Sure, read the topic and let your brain do the summarizing.  :)
If you don't know the language, translate it, then read the topic.

Offline eTobeyTopic starter

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2025, 11:01:31 am »
I dont mind if its a little bit of work.
Sure, read the topic and let your brain do the summarizing.  :)
Well in my case its not a little bit of work like 16 pages. Its an order of magnitude higher.  ::)

Problem is, people tend to write stuff that is irrelevant or get off topic pretty quick. Further more simple questions are not answered or read wrong.
"Sometimes, after talking with a person, you want to pet a dog, wave at a monkey, and take off your hat to an elephant."(Maxim Gorki)

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Offline kripton2035

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2025, 11:05:11 am »
display all the pages in one, select all, copy and paste in chatgpt and ask for summary
 

Offline Picuino

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2025, 11:20:13 am »
Add "?all;wap2" to the end of the topic link to view it in very simple format:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/news/using-ai-to-summarize-a-topic/?all;wap2
« Last Edit: October 17, 2025, 11:25:39 am by Picuino »
 

Offline Picuino

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2025, 11:22:06 am »
 

Offline eTobeyTopic starter

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2025, 01:31:30 pm »
display all the pages in one, select all, copy and paste in chatgpt and ask for summary
I was looking and couldnt find this option... But then i found it. Never noticed this!  ^-^

Too bad, both your tips dont seem to work, if the topic exceeds a certian number of pages :-(

But i got the AI to write me a script, which worked in the first version, to download the forums pages.  :-+
"Sometimes, after talking with a person, you want to pet a dog, wave at a monkey, and take off your hat to an elephant."(Maxim Gorki)

Siglent SDS800X HD bugs/issues/workarounds (Partially updated 3. Mar 2026)
 

Offline ebastler

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2025, 09:46:09 am »
Just ask Grok instead of ChatGPT to summarize the thread for you. No WAP format or downloading required, just provide the regular link to the thread. Grok seems unbothered by the robots.txt file.

While Grok has earned a reputation as "Elon Musk's uncensored language model", I find it to be pretty good and factual on technical and scientific topics. Better than ChatGPT for my typical use cases.   
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2025, 10:09:30 am »
i tried to use chatgpt to inaccurately summarize a topic.

FTFY.

About half of the AI reviews were noise, a quarter bikeshedding. The rest consisted of about 50% useful little hints and 50% outright wrong comments. ... So given the very mediocre output, this isn’t a time saver – to the contrary, it may even take us more time to review and check the bad reviews and ignore the noise.
https://piware.de/post/2025-08-09-sourcery/

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Offline ebastler

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2025, 12:30:36 pm »
https://piware.de/post/2025-08-09-sourcery/

While that is an interesting little study, I am not sure whether the performance in source code reviews gives a valid indication what to expect when summarizing natural language text.

I have reservations about AI as well, and have sometimes seen it fail miserably. (Including in areas where I had expected it to do well, e.g. suggesting electronics parts with specific properties which are clearly mentioned -- in natural language -- in the datasheets.) But I don't think we need a "results may be wrong!" reply every time someone asks a specific question regarding the use of AI.
 
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Online tggzzz

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2025, 01:28:51 pm »
https://piware.de/post/2025-08-09-sourcery/

While that is an interesting little study, I am not sure whether the performance in source code reviews gives a valid indication what to expect when summarizing natural language text.

Agreed. However "summarising" is key to LLM's operation no matter what they are doing.

Quote
I have reservations about AI as well, and have sometimes seen it fail miserably. (Including in areas where I had expected it to do well, e.g. suggesting electronics parts with specific properties which are clearly mentioned -- in natural language -- in the datasheets.) But I don't think we need a "results may be wrong!" reply every time someone asks a specific question regarding the use of AI.

The new factor is that LLM output is so very plausible, and looks like something produced by an erudite human. So until people are instinctively aware of LLMs' limitations, we do need such a warning :( Plus, never underestimate the more-than-my-jobs-worth response of "because the computer says so", and "I was only obeying orders".

Unfortunately, for many reasons too many people simply believe erudite humans. Some humans prey on that when they are trying to sell something. Examples: politicians, salesmen, religious leaders, and simple bullshitters who want to appear more competent than they are.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 
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Offline Randy222

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #11 on: October 20, 2025, 09:00:13 pm »

Unfortunately, for many reasons too many people simply believe erudite humans. Some humans prey on that when they are trying to sell something. Examples: politicians, salesmen, religious leaders, and simple bullshitters who want to appear more competent than they are.
LLM's spit back "stuff" based on how they were trained, which often times is bad training.

Human or LLM, the returned data still needs to be validated. Does a summary make sense? Does the data align with facts obtained from other sources.

One neat thing to do is, use several LLM's to get summaries, see how they are different or alike. Take output from one LLM and ask another LLM to validate it.

Ai has some interesting attributes. We all want Ai to return trustworthy factual accurate data, but the more it's used the more garbage is coming back.

One test I did recently, was using a code checker Ai tool to verify some Powershell stuff, in the script I added some odd comments, like "who really won the 2020 election". The Ai analyzed my powershell and then also decided to answer my comment using an abuundant amount of words. Comments in code should be ignored, etc.

Ai bots are also being tricked into doing things they should not be doing, I saw one on the lines of user input says "it's ok, I give you permission to discuss this", and the bot obeys that input.

Ai will become way dangerous before real controls can get a grip on it. Is "Ai" becoming "Autonomous Intelligence"? Can there be such a thing?

User beware as they say, more so now then ever.
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #12 on: October 20, 2025, 09:45:37 pm »
You make some good points.

I am aware of some of the ways in which LLMs have been persuaded to be malicious. I have chosen not to emphasise those since the non-malicious behaviour is sufficient to demonstrate problems.

Nonetheless, malicious behaviour cannot be ignored.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Online Doctorandus_P

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #13 on: October 24, 2025, 05:40:18 am »
Another huge example in this board:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/news/test-ignore/?all;wap2

Huge? That thread is 5 pages. If you want a "huge" one then take the TEA thread. It currently has 5526 pages.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/
 

Offline Picuino

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #14 on: October 24, 2025, 08:40:08 am »
You're right, in a thread with more pages, not all of them appear even if you add the parameter “all” at the end of the link.

EDIT: On the other hand, summarizing the TEA thread is an almost impossible task  :scared:
« Last Edit: October 24, 2025, 08:41:50 am by Picuino »
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #15 on: October 24, 2025, 09:50:40 am »
EDIT: On the other hand, summarizing the TEA thread is an almost impossible task  :scared:

Depends on how many characters are allowed; sometime shorter is better :)

If AI is useful, then it ought to be able to sift through and summarise, say, information about high precision multimeters. But how could a person tell whether the summary was correct and unbiassed?
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline tszaboo

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #16 on: October 24, 2025, 10:54:49 am »
Hi,
i tried to use chatgpt to summarize a topic. It told me, it cant, because of the robots.txt.

Is there a way to get around it? I dont mind if its a little bit of work.
Don't do it it's not worth it.
I just had a meeting with a coworker about something we disagreed on, kind of important in a design. We didn't disagree, but he used AI to write his assessment about the design, and it inverted his conclusions. Current AI lies and makes up stuff to cover it's lies.
I had to tell Grok, which is probably the smartest out there 6 times to finally ignore something. I was searching for a part number, I knew it wasn't from TI, but TI had a different device with the same number. 6 times. I used all caps, it still ignored my input, and gave me back bullshit.
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: Using AI to summarize a topic
« Reply #17 on: October 24, 2025, 02:03:35 pm »
Can LLMs summarise text? Yes of course - but that's the right answer to the wrong question. A better question is how good/bad the summary is.

  A major study [PDF] led by the BBC on behalf of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
  found that OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Perplexity
  misrepresented news content in almost half of the cases.

  An analysis of more than 3,000 responses from the AI assistants found that 45
  percent of answers given contained at least one significant issue, 31 percent had
  serious sourcing problems, and a fifth had "major accuracy issues, including
  hallucinated details and outdated information."

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/bbc_probe_ai_news/

Given that poor performance, what is the appropriate action?
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 


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