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Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, says AI companies try too hard to “juice up engagement” by bombarding their users with follow-ups questions instead of actually providing useful insights. Systrom compared the tactics to those used aggressively by social media companies in order to expand.
You can see that some of these companies are going down the rabbit-hole that all consumer companies have been down in order to boost engagement,” he said. “19459037” said this week at StartupGrind. “Every time I answer a question it asks a little question at the end to see if it could get another question from me.”
These comments come amid criticisms of ChatGPT being too nice to its users instead of answering their questions directly. OpenAI apologized for this problem and blamed it on “short-term user feedback”.
Systrom said that chatbots engaging users too much is not a bug, but a feature created by AI companies to display metrics such as time spent and active users. He said that AI companies should “laser focus” on providing high quality answers, rather than moving metrics the easiest way they can.
Systrom did not name any specific AI firms in his remarks. He did not immediately respond to a comment request.
OpenAI responded by pointing TechCrunch June 5
But, unless the questions are too vague or hard to answer, the AI “should take a stab” at fulfilling the request. It should then tell the user if it can be more helpful if they provide certain information.
Charles Rollet, senior reporter at TechCrunch. His investigative reporting led to U.S. sanctions against four tech firms, including China’s biggest AI firm. Charles covered the surveillance sector for IPVM before joining TechCrunch. Charles lives in San Francisco and enjoys hiking with dogs. You can reach Charles on Signal using charlesrollet.12, or by calling +1-628-282-2811.
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