OpenAI and Reddit Unite to Revolutionize AI-Powered Community Interactions

While it may not have been the collaboration that many saw coming anytime soon the makers of ChatGPT have just unveiled a strategic partnership with the popular social media app Reddit.

The deal is said to revolutionize how users are interacting online with different communities while experiencing success linked to AI-based features. Such a collaboration is major news for Reddit which is a top-of-the-line platform for news and forum discussions.

It comes just days after Reddit entered into a deal with Google regarding content licensing that would leverage strengths linked to both firms to produce unparalleled experiences for users while driving innovation in the world of AI.

Such partnerships would give OpenAI access to Data API from Reddit that’s real-time and more structural in design, not to mention major access to content produced by communities on Reddit.

There’s a lot of enthusiasm here and excitement in terms of this new deal from both ends as OpenAI revealed in its latest statement that users can not avail of the best and timely data in ChatGPT while Reddit benefits from an exclusive array of AI endeavors.

The combination of Reddit’s data with OpenAI’s latest tools offering would greatly enhance AI comprehension and display content from the app that’s new and happening.

The app has really transformed into one of the firm’s biggest open archives featuring data that’s not only up to date but relevant in context so humans can benefit. In this way, it’s the users who can benefit from both ends as they get more of a taste of what they might be in search of. So as you can tell, it’s a win-win situation from both ends.

The collaboration is said to make a serious milestone in combining AI with social media while paving the way for apps like Reddit to roll out the finest form of AI features that can be used by moderators and more.

While building more on OpenAI’s latest lineup of models, we can see how Reddit could bring a vision of the entire AI experience to life while rolling out content that’s more personalized in design including recommendations and other forms of innovation. So what you get is a more immersive and wholesome user experience.

What is interesting is how major of a move this happens to be, considering the stiff competition in the industry today. Both tech giants have made quite an impact in the market. Their revenue streams are doing great and you can see apps like Reddit now being compared to the success of TikTok and Meta’s Facebook.

Such collaborations of Reddit with the AI giant and others like Google just prove how committed Reddit is in terms of leveraging the content of the past to ensure innovation and growth take place.

Meanwhile, OpenAI is here hoping to benefit from such deals by attaining access to the most real and latest content that really could assist in refining its model's lineup. Remember, OpenAI is seeking to diversify ChatGPT and beyond using training data that goes above and beyond the usual information that is seen on the web.

Remember, the company’s legal challenges on this front are another worrisome factor as copyright matters keep on peaking and this can provide the most sustainable and fruitful approach to the firm in the world of AI.

But again critics are expressing concerns about the collaboration including how it could bring forward issues linked to user privacy which both sides realize and are trying to combat. Reddit went public with its content policy and how users were assured that existing arrangements linked to this new deal would not compromise any other Terms of Service in place. So that means no content can be used by users that is accessed via API without Reddit approving this front.

Meanwhile, as this collaboration continues to unfold, we’re seeing more anticipation on the users' end in terms of how they can benefit from fruitful AI experiences where innovation is key and better user experiences set the stage for evolution in AI and social media alike.

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Study: Chatbots Found to Restrict Information, Echo User Biases, and Hinder Independent Thought

A new study by Johns Hopkins University finds that chatbots have limited information and they reinforce ideologies on users. The research discusses how the use of AI chatbots is constricting people from forming their own opinions, which can make them vulnerable to manipulation. When people ask ChatGPT to write a summary of a book, research or any other form of content, ChatGPT just uses the information that has already been stored in it to form an opinion. This prevents people from discerning what’s right and what’s wrong.

The lead author of the study, Ziang Xiao, says that chatbots aren’t designed to be biased but their answers reflect the biases of the person who designed them and the type of questions users are asking them. So, this means that chatbots are only giving the answers users want to hear from them. Ziang Xiao wanted to study how online searches are influenced by chatbots and how much difference people felt in answers from search platforms and Chatbots. For the study, the researchers asked 272 members to write about different topics like healthcare, student loans or some other things and look for more writing material from ChatGPT and ordinary search engines especially built for this study.

When the search results came, participants of the study wrote their essays for the second time and also answered some questions about their topic. The researchers also made participants read two contradicting articles about the same topic and also asked them questions about which article has the accurate information in their opinion. The results also showed that chatbots had limited information about the topics as compared to ordinary search engines and chatbots were also only reflecting the attitudes of the users. Xiao said that people only look for information that is similar to their viewpoints.

There is also a difference in the way people seek answers from an ordinary search engine and a chatbot. People tend to only write keywords in the search box while they write full questions on chatbots. Chatbots use this form of communication to their own advantage and look for clues and attitudes from which they give answers according to what the user wants. Researchers also created a chatbot which was designed to agree with whatever the user says. It was more powerful than the other chatbots. But there was also a chatbot which was designed to disagree with whatever the user says. But it was not powerful enough to change people’s opinions.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

TikTok Creators Unite To Legally Challenge US Government Over New Bill Banning The App

The news about President Biden signing the TikTok divestiture bill into the country’s law has not been appreciated by many around the country.

This is why creators are now joining forces to legally challenge the American Government with a new lawsuit that was filed inside the Federal Court on Tuesday.

The company’s CEO has already mentioned time and time again how they would fight back as the law failed to follow America’s own First Amendment. And he even went as far as to conclude that it was unconstitutional and must be removed.

Remember, the app has a user base of close to 170 million individuals in the US who make use of this platform to generate a living. So to scrap it entirely for a reason that many feel is unlawful is causing massive concern.

The bill first came into play last month after the country’s head of state signed it. It states that the platform must be separate from its parent firm which is based in China, called ByteDance. However, the latter has argued and confirmed that it would rather lose functions in the US markets than go about selling off its algorithms to other US-based sellers.

In this particular legal case, creators argue that this law is undermining the country’s own principles and stops it from being an area where creativity stems. The news regarding the latest lawsuit was first broken by a legal company that represented all those who had signed a petition against it.

They hope to block this ban from coming into effect, filing the case as a First Amendment legal challenge that is on behalf of several creators.

The company that has pulled out the lawsuit has close to 600 legal experts that span around the country in seven different American cities. And it’s safe to say that it’s a force to reckon with.

Both TikTok and ByteDance rolled out their own separate lawsuit on this front to block all claims generated for those taking place on May 7th. They felt such a ban was designed for destruction and intense manipulation.

It was also said to silence many American citizens and that was not going to go unnoticed. So now, they’re putting up a fight and failing to back down.

TikTok says it has over the years spent a huge sum of funds that go into billions, just so that it could ensure users’ privacy and safety were never compromised. They wished to make sure the app was far from being implicated and manipulated by authorities in China. But the way things have unfolded recently and the accusations that have been labeled against the app are just devastating.

For those who may have missed it, security officials at the White House accused TikTok of colllecting mass amounts of sensitive data and sharing that with China’s government. This is why the platform was called out as a huge national security threat.

Lawmakers called TikTok a surveillance and security nightmare that must be curbed before it’s too late. Meanwhile, not everyone in the country feels a ban was necessary or the right decision.

A poll carried out before the decision for the ban came into play had the majority of the country’s population holding a belief that a ban and separation of the app from its parent firm was not the right decision or even possible.

Meanwhile, content creators in this regard are arguing and fighting for their rights to freedom of expression. From making content to selling things through the app, many are being stripped of their basic rights and that’s not something they’re willing to accept silently.

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New Research Shows Strategies for Parents which Can Help Decrease the Smartphone Overuse in Adolescents

A new research published in a journal named Addictive Behaviors talks about how excessive use of smartphones can affect behavioral patterns which can interfere in our personal, social and professional lives. The overuse of smartphones also results in disturbed sleep patterns, strained personal relationships and decrease in productivity. The research talks about how parents can take part in making their children use smartphones as little as possible. The study also explains that parents should focus more on participation and less on supervision when it comes to their child’s use of smartphones.

For the study, the researchers surveyed 1187 families which consisted of a mother, father and their adolescent child of ages between 14 to 18. The researchers collected the data at two points, one from baseline and other from six-month follow up. The researchers observed the family dynamics of researchers, focusing on how parents discussed smartphone usage to their adolescent, their general communications and how they spent their quality times together. Efrati, the lead researcher, and his team of other researchers found out that there was improvement in communications between parents and their adolescents about smartphone usage. The research also found out that communication with only fathers and adolescents also played an important and more effective part in reduction of smartphone use.

The researchers also talked about four main parental strategies that can help in the smartphone usage reduction of their adolescents. The first strategy is restrictive mediation that involves setting rules and timings on smartphone use. Parents can impose these rules and timings to their adolescents on their child's phone to limit its use. This method showed a decrease in PSU and social pressure on adolescents. The second strategy is negative active which means mediation of parents to disapprove of their adolescent's certain smartphone activities. In this strategy, parents often criticize their children’s overuse of smartphones in front of them. But a negative active strategy has negative effects like increased PSU and social pressure.

There is also a positive action strategy which is opposite to negative action where parents tell their children beneficial and advantageous use of smartphones. This helps the children focus on using smartphones for better purposes. As opposed to negative active, adolescents felt free from getting emotional gain from smartphones and connected emotionally with their parents. The fourth strategy is co-use where parents can get involved in smartphone activities with their children like playing games or exploring the internet. When parents used smartphones with their parents, it also resulted in decreased social pressure about smartphone overuse.

This study altogether found out that communication, support and limited mediation of parents with their adolescents can help decrease their smartphone use. However, this study is also limited to only one area and the researchers are not sure if these type of strategies can be used everywhere in the world.

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Google Begins Revolutionizing Its Search With Innovative AI-Powered Features

Google Search is getting a revamp with the addition of new and exclusive AI-powered features.

The company has started adding a host of exciting and innovative features across both its search and search labs while also giving searchers in the US the chance to benefit from AI Overviews.

There’s a host of options available including reasoning, AI Search, Google Lens, and whatnot. And we’re covering each of them in detail for you below.

For starters, Search Labs will have the ability to Adjust Overviews so that it’s more simplified or broken down to reveal details. When you press on the tab for Simpler, users get the most basic response and when the Break Down feature is selected, you get detailed responses. Hence, what you get in the end is the chance to simplify things for in-depth replies in the most refined manner.

You can see this feature arriving soon across Search Labs and will be related to all English questions for those based in the US.

Next up, the company is launching a new multistep reasoning offering that uses Gemini for logic. Instead of breaking down complex searches, users will now have the chance to ask complex questions and expect logical responses.

Google rolled out a few examples on this front of what users can expect. For instance, you search for yoga and can even ask for the best ones or those offering discounts for newbies.

Google’s next rollout entails planning capabilities which are designed to give you the chance to plan your needs across Google. You can co-create a host of different things that will give rise to various links online. These results are exported and replaced with more options seen across plan sets. In addition, you’re not just seeing search results but also planning it along.

For instance, you can look for the likes of ideas for meal plans that are simple to make. You can even get starting points with different recipes online and then switch things around, followed up by an export to Google Docs.

The search engine giant has also unveiled search results that are more specific to certain topics so AI can be used for greater organization. This gives you the chance to brainstorm answers to questions. So what users will see is search results put under specific categories which are one of a kind and entail headlines based on what AI has created. It would entail all sorts of perspectives and types of content.

From movies and recipes to books and travel, you’ll see all options across Search.

Last but not least, Google is rolling out another unique endeavor called Lens Search featuring video. This forces users to record content like videos and ask queries while they are taking part in the recording. The company will generate responses depending on what queries are asked. As you can imagine, it just takes the whole visual search ordeal to new extremes as users ask questions supported by videos.



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Instagram Alerts Creators About Longer Reels Hurting Their Reach On The App

If you happen to be a content creator on the Instagram app, then you might want to read on further.

Meta's popular social media app is alerting creators about how Reels might be a profitable venture but certain guidelines must be taken to prevent their reach from tumbling.

The company says Reels that go beyond the 90-second mark are said to do more harm than good in terms of engagement and reach. So it’s better to steer clear of them and instead focus on valuable content that’s short.

This was a very helpful note shared at the app’s creator event that was held recently in New York. The platform’s CEO Adam Mosseri was there to provide answers to queries that commonly prevail in people’s minds when creating content that brings about the most fruitful results.

This happened to be one of the several notes revealed by crew members there who actively participated in clearing out confusion regarding the app and its algorithms.

There was a particular slide that put emphasis on how creators can maximize returns on Reels by simply restricting them to the 90-second limit. So the shorter the reel, the better the distribution, when you put it in simple terms.

A lot of what was discussed at the creator event was very basic and things that most creators were already aware so we’re not going into the depth of those. But others like advice related to posting at the same time when you put up an update on another app is always beneficial, the platform mentioned. This might be linked to broader branding as well as rolling out discussions at a single time.

On the flip side, the app mentioned how publishing content that was not yours, rolling out material with watermarks arising from other platforms, engaging in clickbait, and just poor content quality were some other top and trending reasons for low reach.

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Moreover, publishing Reels that are more than 90 seconds is never recommended either and that seemed to be the biggest take-home message. But it wouldn’t be wrong to add how that has some wondering about why the app is even allowing you to do that if it’s going to harm you in the long run?

Are people not willing to watch longer reels? To better provide some clarification on the statement, the app says that added the 90-second limit. But if you feel the need for more time to prove your point in the video, then you have that option always.

We’ve seen the platform take part in trials for reels that last anywhere between 3 to 10 minutes. But it wouldn’t be wrong to add how such experiments are not going well and we won’t be seeing them possibly be rolled out.

Whatever the case may be, remember one thing. Publish short and relevant content and reap the benefits, simple!

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Aalto University Study: Believing in AI Improves Performance, Even Without Real AI

Recent research from Aalto University has revealed that just believing in AI assistance can improve people’s performance. This is observed even if AI doesn’t exist. This phenomenon is called the placebo effect. It shows that performance can improve simply because people expect it to when they think AI is helping them.

In the study, participants did a letter recognition task twice: once on their own and once with the supposed help of an AI system.

They were divided into two groups; one group was told the AI system was reliable and would help improve their performance, while the other group was informed it was unreliable and would likely hinder their performance.

Surprisingly, both groups performed better when they believed an AI was involved, even though in reality, there was no AI aiding them.

The research team set up the task so that participants matched letters appearing on a screen at different speeds. They found that all participants, regardless of the group they were in, completed the task faster and more attentively when they thought an AI was assisting them.

This study not only highlights the expectations people have of AI but also indicates how strong these beliefs are. Even when participants were told the AI might worsen their performance, they still expected some form of enhancement, showing the difficulty in reducing people's trust in AI capabilities.

Further tests were done online, which replicated the findings of the initial experiment. Participants were also asked about their expectations when performing tasks with AI, and most had a positive view of AI's potential to assist them, regardless of their general skepticism about technology.

These findings bring up challenges in how AI systems are evaluated. The placebo effect could skew results in studies testing the effectiveness of AI technologies, suggesting that results could be influenced by how much people believe in the technology rather than the technology itself.

The research implies a need for placebo-controlled studies in the field of human-computer interaction to ensure that evaluations of AI systems are not biased by users' expectations. This is crucial for accurately assessing the impact of AI systems on task performance.

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