AI is learning from what you said on Reddit, Stack Overflow or ...
Post a comment on Reddit, answer coding questions on Stack Overflow, edit a Wikipedia entry, or share a baby photo on your public Facebook or Instagram feed and you are also helping to train the next generation of artificial intelligence. Not everyone is OK with that — especially as the same online forums where they’ve spent years contributing are increasingly flooded with AI-generated commentary mimicking what real humans might say.
Some longtime users have tried to delete their past contributions or rewrite them into gibberish, but the protests haven’t had much effect. A handful of governments — including Brazil’s privacy regulator on Tuesday — have also tried to step in.
Challenges and Responses
Platforms are responding — with mixed results. Take Stack Overflow, the popular hub for computer programming tips. First, it banned ChatGPT-written responses due to frequent errors, but now it’s partnering with AI chatbot developers and has punished some of its own users who tried to erase their past contributions in protest.
It’s one of a number of social media platforms grappling with user wariness — and occasional revolts — as they try to adapt to the changes brought by generative AI.
Adapting to Change
Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar said the company is trying to balance rising demand for instant chatbot-generated coding assistance with the desire for a community “knowledge base” where people still want to post and “get recognized” for what they’ve contributed.
Chandrasekar readily describes Stack Overflow’s challenges as like one of the “case studies” he learned about at Harvard Business School, of how a business survives — or doesn’t — after a disruptive technological change.
Regulation and Compliance
Brazil’s national data protection authority on Tuesday took action to ban social media giant Meta Platforms from training its AI models on the Facebook and Instagram posts of Brazilians. It established a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,820) for non-compliance.
Meta in a statement called it a “step backwards for innovation” and said it has been more transparent than many industry counterparts doing similar AI training on public content, and that its practices comply with Brazilian laws.
Future Concerns
Reddit has taken a different approach — partnering with AI developers like OpenAI and Google while also making clear that content can’t be taken in bulk without the platform’s approval by commercial entities “with no regard for user rights or privacy.”
Reddit hasn’t tried to punish users who protested — nor could it easily do so given how much say voluntary moderators have on what happens in their specialty forums known as subreddits. But what worries Gilbert, who helps moderate the “AskHistorians” subreddit, is the increasing flow of AI-generated commentary that moderators must decide whether to allow or ban.
