Reddit’s CEO Claims The Platform Is In A Fierce Competition For AI Training Data.

[Cpvr]

Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman says that it’s platform’s content is among the world’s best training data for artificial intelligence — and an increasingly valuable commodity as the company intends to find its place in the AI “arms race.”

At the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference on Monday, Huffman gave everyone a glimpse into the future of online searching in our increasingly AI-powered world.

“AI has to come from somewhere,” he said. “The source of artificial intelligence is actual intelligence, and that’s what you find on Reddit.”

Reddit which become public in March has quickly become a major force in the world of AI. Why? Because its website is like a giant, ever-growing dictionary of everyday language on pretty much any topic you can imagine.

According to Huffman, this makes it an incredibly useful tool for teaching AI systems to understand and communicate more like humans.

Reddit has a massive index of user-generated content and that public content has already played a significant role in the creation of popular AI models, Huffman said, prompting the company to figure out its place in the AI ecosystem.

Reddit’s been making some big moves in the AI world. Earlier this year, they set up some clear rules about how their content can be used and then made major deals with both Google and OpenAI.

Basically they are letting these tech giants use Reddit posts to train their AI models. Google’s paying a hefty price for this access — a cool $60 million per year. OpenAI’s also getting a piece of the action, but the exact details of that deal are still under wraps.

“We think generally the internet is better when it’s open and interconnected,” Huffman said. “But we also need to make sure we aren’t just giving away the value of Reddit to the largest companies in the world for free.”

Huffman was asked about whether other big-name companies are “taking advantage” of Reddit’s information without an AI deal in place.

“Yeah, the ones I didn’t mention by and large,” Huffman said, who also said Reddit was in talks with “just about everybody” to license its data when asked a specific question about Microsoft.

Reddit’s heritage is one of internet openness, Huffman said. But the company needs to find a way to maintain its values on terms that are still sustainable for the platform, he said.

“We’ve been getting scraped every which way,” Huffman said. “We’ve invested a lot in the last couple of years in locking that down, but it is an arms race.”

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-platform-arms-race-ai-training-steve-huffman-2024-10

 

[hungkit]

The robust environment of Reddit can indeed make it a good space for training AI technologies.
I am not however sure how the CEO intends to achieve this purpose.