We’ve seen artificial intelligence give some strange responses to questions as chatbots become more common Today, Reddit answers are in the spotlight after a moderator flagged AI tools to provide dangerous medical advice that they could not disable or hide from view.
Mod saw Reddit answers suggesting that people experiencing chronic pain stop taking their current prescriptions and take high-dose kratom, a controlled substance that is illegal in some states. The user said they then asked Reddit Answers about other medical questions. They found potentially dangerous advice for treating neo-natal fever, along with some of the right activities, as well as heroin being used for chronic pain relief. Several other mods, particularly from health-focused sub-reddits, responded to the original post by adding their concern that Reddit Answers has no way to close or flag an issue in their community if it provides incorrect or dangerous information.
A Reddit representative said 404 media Those Reddit answers have been updated to address some mod concerns. “This update ensures that ‘Related Answers’ on sensitive topics, which may have previously been visible on post detail pages (also known as conversation pages), will no longer appear,” the spokesperson told the publication. “This change has been implemented to enhance user experience and maintain visibility of appropriate content within the platform.” We’ve reached out to Reddit for additional comment on which topics are being dropped but have not received a response at this time
Moderators call
When the representative 404 media Given that Reddit answers “exclude personal, quarantine and NSFW community content, as well as some mature content,” the AI tool clearly doesn’t seem equipped to accurately deliver medical information, much less handle snark, sarcasm or potentially bad advice offered by other redditors. Besides the latest move to not appear on “sensitive topics,” Reddit doesn’t appear to plan to provide any tools to control how or when AI is shown in subreddits, which could make the already challenging task of moderation nearly impossible.