Dec 9, 2024 at 10:27 PM Reddit unveils 'Reddit Answers,' an AI-powered tool for finding information on the site
Reddit has introduced "Reddit Answers," an AI-powered search tool designed to answer direct questions and help users find information on the platform, enabling natural language searches directly on Reddit without relying on Google Search.
It delivers concise answers quickly and includes links to original posts for further exploration. Users can see summaries based on real conversations, ensuring genuine insights from the community, and can engage with complete discussions or ask more questions. The new feature leverages Reddit's vast community, offering recommendations, discussions, and expert opinions.
Initially, it's available to a select group in the US and supports English, with plans to expand language support and availability. Users can sign up for notifications about its availability in their region. Reddit aims to enhance this tool, making it a central resource for accessing discussions and insights across the platform.
Reddit solution happened way too late to be a game changer, and most of the Reddit content, let's face it, is more about meme and rant than health advises. This is not the knowledge hub of the Internet. Also, many Reddit threads don't have much context, and some answers are simply irrelevant. But AI is what investors want... Well, actually, financial investments in AI are stagnating because they're is no payback so far. So Reddit can only hope that current users will spend more time on Reddit to show them more ads, and so, trying to compensate AI expenses.
Not a bad move on their part. So much Google and AI info is vacuumed up from Reddit anyway. I can see why they'd rather you stay within their own platform for that. As an add-on, I'm not against it. But if they remove old.Reddit.com or the RSS feeds, then I will throw a tantrum.
Ohhhh, so that's what Reddit's done to our posts and comments. They're now being used as "sources" for AI-generated answers to questions on the platform.
I'd rather "Google" search my way through those answers myself, thanks.
My favorite Reddit thing is when I search a solution to a problem on Google, it gives me a Reddit post about the problem in question and the top voted comment on that post is "use Google".
Reply written Dec 10, 2024
The funny thing is, if I'm getting this right, Reddit Answers is gonna boldly assume that this is the most accurate answer (since it's the top voted comment), and will present that as the answer. Another example of AI working as intended :P
Aside from that, though, I'd like to add that there have been several others saying that this is a waste of energy and money that could've been spent fixing the mobile application and the traditional search functionality. But nope, it's still about AI, the "new trend".
Reply written Dec 10, 2024