Alexis Ohanian, one of the cofounders of Reddit, had a gut feeling: Reddit shouldn’t give its data to OpenAI.
The Reddit cofounder and former executive chairman told Ann Berry on the “Brew Markets” podcast that about 10 years ago, there was an internal debate at Reddit about handing over data to Sam Altman.
“Sam had just helped us raise a round of funding,” Ohanian said on the podcast, recounting details of Reddit’s $50 million Series B investment round it announced in 2014.
In 2015, Altman cofounded OpenAI as a nonprofit.
Between 2015 and 2016, Ohanian said, Altman had begun asking “to basically aggressively scrape Reddit.”
A debate ensued between Ohanian and Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman (who still serves as the now-public company’s CEO).
“Sam is a very smart guy, incredibly cunning,” Ohanian said.
“We’ve known him since the start of YC,” he said, referring to the Y Combinator startup accelerator that Altman used to run. “Doesn’t seem like the most philanthropically minded guy, but he has this nonprofit that he’s really passionate about, he says it’s such a long shot, and he needs our data.”
Ohanian said he “felt in my bones” that Reddit shouldn’t give the data to Altman.
Ohanian said he ultimately “lost that debate.” Fast forward to 2024, OpenAI and Reddit announced a formal licensing deal that would allow OpenAI to train its AI models on content from Reddit.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ohanian said that Altman, to his credit, “realized before anyone else — including us, including the founders — just how valuable that data was on Reddit.”
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One of the biggest value props of Reddit’s data: “Back then, it was all human,” Ohanian said.
“It definitely feels as though most of the social media we consume now is fake,” Ohanian added. “It’s either bots or AI-generated or AI-assisted or in some way just fake.”
This is going to be a “big challenge” for all internet platforms, not just Reddit, he said, adding that companies will need to prove that content is human somehow.
A spokesperson for Reddit said that the company prohibits content that is manipulated or inauthentic, such as bots, and has been monitoring and removing inauthentic content for about two decades. Reddit community moderators also play a role in limiting content, they said.
“Our focus is, and always will be, on keeping Reddit a trusted place for human conversation,” Huffman wrote in a post about Reddit’s “next chapter” and approach to AI content earlier this year.
The Reddit spokesperson said the company is exploring ways to confirm accounts are operated by humans without compromising user privacy.
Ohanian’s vision for a more human internet is something he’s been outspoken about. Last month, he talked about the “dead internet theory” — a scenario where the internet is more AI and bots than humans — on TBPN, and he spoke about it again in a recent interview with Business Insider.
“The most potent form of social today is basically in group chats, which is obviously not new technology, but what it’s highlighting is the fact that that’s a trusted group of people who you actually know, who are verifiably human,” Ohanian told Business Insider.
Even though Altman’s AI is arguably contributing to this “dead internet” scenario, he’s also talked about this very topic.
Ohanian, meanwhile, is doubling down on investing in businesses that bolster human connection, from sports to resurrecting platforms like Digg to new social startups like music app Airbuds.
“In an age of even more AI content everywhere, the fundamentally human stuff is going to do even better,” Ohanian said on the podcast.
