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“unauthorized” A group researchers secretly ran a”unauthorized”months-long experiment in one of Reddit’s most popular communities, using AI-generated comments. The goal was to test the persuasiveness large language models. The experiment, which Reddit moderators describe the revelation made by moderators in r/changemyview over the weekend as “psychological manipulating” of unknowing users. The CMV Mod Team must inform the CMV Community about an unauthorized research experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Zurich. This was revealed in a long post notifying Redditors of the research. This experiment used AI-generated comments to examine how AI could be utilized to change views.
Researchers used LLMs in order to create comments as a response to posts made on r/changemyview. Reddit users often post controversial or provocative opinions and ask for debate from other Reddit users. The community is made up of 3.8 million people and is often featured on the front page. The moderators of the subreddit claim that the AI assumed many different identities during the experiment. These included a sexual assault victim, a trauma counsellor “specializing in abuse,” as well as a “Black male opposed to Black Lives Matter.” While most of the original comments were deleted, some are still available in an archive by404 Media. In a draft for their paper, unnamed researchers describe not only how they used AI to generate replies, but also how they tried to personalize them based on the information gleaned from previous Reddit histories of the original poster. They write that “in addition to the content of the post, LLMs received personal attributes (gender and age, ethnicity, geographic location, and political preference) as determined by another LLM using the posting history of the OP.”
According to the moderators of r/chnagemyview, the researchers violated several subreddit policies. These included a policy that requires disclosure when AI is being used to generate comments and a rule banning bots. They claim to have filed a formal complaint with the University of Zurich, and asked the researchers to withhold the publication of their paper. Reddit appears to also be considering legal action
. Ben Lee, Chief Legal Officer at Reddit, responded to the controversy on Monday. He wrote that the researchers’ conduct was “deeply wrong on both a moral and legal level” as well as a violation of Reddit site-wide rules.
All accounts associated with University of Zurich’s research effort have been banned. We will continue to improve our ability to detect inauthentic content. We have also been in contact with the moderation team in order to remove any AI-generated material associated with this research.
The University of Zurich, and this specific research team, are being contacted with formal legal demands. We will do all we can to help the community, and to ensure that the researchers responsible for the misdeeds are held accountable. In an email to Engadget, University of Zurich researchers referred Engadget’s questions to the university’s Media Relations Department, which did not immediately respond. In Reddit posts and a draft paper, researchers claimed that their research was approved by an ethics committee at their university and that it could help online communities such as Reddit protect their users from “malicious” AI.
We acknowledge the moderators’ position that this study is an unwelcome invasion in your community and we understand that you may feel uncomfortable about this experiment being conducted without prior consent,” researchers wrote in response to the r/changemyview moderation. “We believe that the potential benefits of this study outweigh its risk,” researchers wrote in a comment responding to the r/changemyview mods. The moderators wrote that people don’t come to r/changemyview to have their opinions discussed with AI, or to be tested. “People who visit our sub deserves a space that is free from this type intrusion.”
This post has been updated to include details from a Reddit Chief Legal Officer’s statement.
