Reddit’s AI Experiment Fallout
April 29, 2025, 12:20 pm
Controversy has erupted over a secret AI experiment on Reddit, where researchers were found to have manipulated user discussions with bot accounts. In response, Reddit moved swiftly—banning the experimenters and issuing formal legal demands—after public backlash and ethical concerns over the covert study.
Bluesky: @levesque-chris.bsky.social, @josephcox.bsky.social, @smcgrath.phd
Commenters on the popular subreddit r/changemymind found out last weekend that they've been majorly duped for months. University of Zurich researchers set out to "investigate the persuasiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) in natural online environments" by unleashing bots pretending to be a...
Researchers at the University of Zurich conducted an unauthorized experiment on the popular Reddit community r/ChangeMyView (CMV), using AI-powered accounts to test the persuasive ability of large language models in a real-world environment. The goal was to measure how effectively AI could...
Reddit called it an "improper and highly unethical experiment" and said it did not know it was happening.
permalink / 6 stories from 4 sources in 5 hours ago #aiethics #privacy #reddit #ai #genai
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