Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder, says social media apps are “not cool anymore” and that much of the internet is at risk as artificial intelligence reshapes user-generated content. Speaking at the first WIRED World Fair, Ohanian said a better version of group chat could become the next major format for online communities, even as AI-generated material and commercial incentives make the internet harder to trust.
A changing internet
“We’re hopeful that a better version of group chat will become the new version of UGC,” Ohanian told WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Good.
Ohanian has a complicated relationship with the internet. He resigned from Reddit in 2020 to make space for Black board members and to pressure the company to reform its content-moderation policies after the killing of George Floyd. Reddit had become notorious for hosting violent and harmful rhetoric.
“I don’t blame him,” Ohanian said, recalling that he recently learned the person behind a Reddit tattoo—once a symbol of the site’s success for him—had since hidden it.
Ohanian now runs Seven Seven Six, a venture capital firm that manages more than $1.3 billion in assets. He focuses on sports, where he sees examples of real communities in an era of “AI slop” and increasingly “manipulated” internet experiences.
Ohanian supports the “dead internet theory,” the idea that a significant amount of online activity and content is generated by bots. Large language models have accelerated that trend by allowing AI agents to outperform human users.
“The internet I grew up with was really built for humans in the first place, and the user interface and experience will be gone,” Ohanian said, “rather than for people.”
AI’s benefits and risks for Reddit
Generative AI has benefited sites such as Reddit in some ways. The company has licensed its extensive archives of human conversations to companies including Google and OpenAI for training AI models.
“Platforms like ours have become extremely valuable to LLMs,” Ohanian said.
However, AI is also creating challenges for Reddit’s business. The company’s shares fell 29% last week after the platform warned that Google’s AI-powered search was reducing referral traffic.
Ohanian is also concerned that commercializing online conversations could make them less authentic and fill them with “bullshit.” “The reason the internet has been so manipulated is because it’s incredibly valuable to do so,” he said.
Reddit recently announced that users will have to sign in as the company seeks to combat third-party scraping and maintain engagement. Ohanian declined to say whether he supported the move, but said, “There has to be a demonstrable sense of humanity on the internet without it feeling creepy.”
Optimism about AI in medicine
Despite his concerns, Ohanian remains optimistic about AI’s potential benefits. He is particularly interested in the medical advances the technology could enable.
“There’s still a very real possibility that this technology will definitely cause significant damage,” he said. “I think we need to be calm about how we’re building and what we’re doing, but still, you can’t help but look at all the things that clearly could be improved.”
Source: www.wired.com
