This, may, however be to the detrimental of discussion platforms, but if that drives people to self hosted discussion platforms instead of relying on reddit, then it is a net positive.

Discourse's most recent blog delves into this and is an interesting read, I will submit that I think.

Wait, how do you reduce server load by allowing traffic from bots?

> More and more people are using AI, (...)

That's specious reasoning. Sites provide data for their users to consume, and in some cases their business model relies on real people consuming their content.

If you replace "bots" with "scrapers", which is a specific kind of bot, what conclusions do you draw?

> I'm afraid that if you don't at least start to consider how we might accommodate the bots, (...)

Wait, you think this problem is new? What do you think companies do with crawlers and scrapers?