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 Faced by Social Media Platforms
"A more significant portion of the population just kind of feels helpless," said Reddit volunteer moderator Sarah Gilbert, who also studies online communities at Cornell University. "There's nowhere to go except just completely going offline or not contributing in ways that bring value to them and value to others."
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.
Concerns from Users
Software developer Andy Rotering of Bloomington, Minnesota, has used Stack Overflow daily for 15 years and said he worries the company "could be inadvertently hurting its greatest resource" -- the community of contributors who've donated time to help other programmers. "Keeping contributors incentivized to provide commentary should be paramount," he said.
Strategies and Adaptations
"Fast forward five years -- there's going to be all sorts of machine-generated content on the web," Chandrasekar said in an interview. "There's going to be very few places where there's truly authentic, original human thought. And we're one of those places."
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.
