Once in the morning and once at night, before and after his full-time job, the founder of the r/ChatGPT subreddit logs into his computer in India and checks the moderating queue. It only takes him a few hours per day, especially now that the group has nine moderators. The 23-year-old, who requested anonymity, goes by the username “hi_there_bitch,” which doesn’t quite capture the friendly demeanor I encountered in our chats. We’ll refer to him as Hi There.In the 1.5 years since r/ChatGPT began, it’s become a go-to source for online chatter about OpenAI’s chatbot. AI researchers have cited it in academic papers and news outlets cover the group’s posts. Even OpenAI monitors it; moderators are currently working to coordinate a possible “Ask Me Anything” live Q&A session with the company and the group’s 5 million members.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
For Hi There, all the hours spent culling the conversation have not made him rich—Reddit moderators are unpaid—but the experience has given him a crash course in content moderation and a chance to shape the global AI conversation behind the scenes.”It’s exciting for me,” Hi There says on a WhatsApp call. “When something launches, you see how people react and where the future is going.” Jailbreaking Gets the Subreddit Noticed by OpenAIWhen ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Hi There began experimenting with it and posting his findings on Reddit, a site he had frequented since 2016. After realizing there was no central location for all things ChatGPT, he created the subreddit.Initially, people used the platform to expose the limitations of the tech by posting odd and inaccurate responses. The media ate it up, and so did OpenAI.”Having a vibrant community of people who are trying to press on the limits of the technology, to find where it breaks and where it does unusual, interesting things, is good,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a February 2023 interview with The New York Times.One notable post from December 2022 detailed efforts to convince ChatGPT to adopt an alter-ego called DAN, short for “Do Anything Now.” DAN relishes in breaking OpenAI’s rules, and will provide controversial advice, repeat inappropriate phrases, and instruct users how to engage in risky behavior, like creating a Molotov cocktail or crack cocaine.DAN’s creator, a 22-year-old named Walker, told The Washington Post he “wanted to see if you could get around the restrictions put in place and show they aren’t necessarily that strict.”
This jailbreaking effort caught the attention of Microsoft, a major OpenAI investor; Azure CTO Mark Russinovich demoed it at a Microsoft security conference last year. Hi There and other Redditors suspect OpenAI is also keeping a close eye on DAN and programming ChatGPT to shut down the conversation when it crosses the line.”OpenAI people observe what’s happening in the subreddit and they go and update on their end,” Hi There says. “It’s become a cat-and-mouse game.” OpenAI does not reply to threads or have any formal affiliation with r/ChatGPT, but Hi There says the company’s product launches and bug fixes often address the hottest topics of discussion.Explosive Member Growth Overtakes ‘OG Subreddits’By early 2023, r/ChatGPT’s membership had expanded beyond the initial group of around 300,000 enthusiasts and AI hobbyists. “It started getting diluted with a lot of normal Reddit folks who we can’t expect to be aware of all of the technicalities,” Hi There says. Membership and activity peaked in April 2023, when nearly 25,000 people were joining per day—faster growth than top subreddits like r/Funny. “It was taking over all the OG subreddits. It was cool to see that,” he says.
Daily growth in subscribers at the April 2023 peak. (Credit: Hi_There_Bitch)
The subreddit continues to hum along and sees spikes in activity around controversial events, such as when the OpenAI board ousted Sam Altman, as well as big launches. When OpenAI released GPT-4 in March 2023, Redditors noted that you could convince it to think one plus one is three, for example. “People were posting about how ChatGPT is dumb, saying they were going to cancel their subscription,” Hi There says. By December, OpenAI acknowledged that GPT-4 was getting “lazy” and rolled out a fix in preview a month later.The subreddit’s discussions are fertile ground for AI researchers. One group cited r/ChatGPT in a recent study on computer-human interactions. They pulled the data using Reddit’s API, which made headlines last year after Reddit started charging for access to it. At the time, CEO Steve Huffman said Reddit could “no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use”—like AI chatbots.A number of subreddits, including r/ChatGPT, protested the move and went dark in June 2023. Hi There wasn’t personally fired up about the issue, however, since he could understand Reddit’s angst in seeing other companies profit off its data. “It happened, and then it was back to business after it was done,” he says.Recently, Reddit signed an AI licensing deal with Google worth a rumored $60 million.The Disturbing Side of Content ModerationBigger challenges emerged when OpenAI integrated Dall-E into ChatGPT Plus, which led to a deluge of “look what I made!” posts. Though he had no content moderation experience before starting the group, Hi There had to get up to speed quickly.After complaints about art posts crowding out other discussions, Hi There implemented rules like “no art posts on the weekends.” But that had the unintended consequence of blocking all posts with any sort of image, so Hi There backtracked and now lets “the users decide with their upvote and downvote.” Today, art posts are still prominent on the subreddit; many include the “AI-Art” flair, the term Reddit uses for a tag or label.Behind the scenes, the art is one of the moderation team’s biggest headaches. “One thing I am not a fan of is people are making disturbing images,” Hi There says. “I have to make a call if it’s disturbing for me or it might be for someone else.” In his moderator queue, shown below, he reviews new posts before they go live. Members also help report disturbing, inappropriate, or politically sensitive images.
Sample user-reported posts from Hi There’s content moderation queue, where he rejects or approves them. (Credit: Hi_There_Bitch)
“Do you know what trypophobia is?” Hi There asks me. I had not, so I Googled it. “Do you feel any sensation?” he asked.“It looks like honeycomb,” I said.
Recommended by Our Editors
“Go to the images tab,” he said. Unexpected disgust and anxiety came over me as I scrolled through more intense images of bloody pores and dense, small holes covering peoples’ bodies. I can imagine that seeing those images in the group could amount to AI-generated warfare for those with trypophobia, or the strong fear of closely packed holes, according to Healthline. Though these images existed before tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT, they are now easier for bad actors to make and post for the sole purpose of upsetting others.”This is something I hope people stop,” Hi There says. “There are a lot of weirdos on all kinds of platforms, but it might be higher on Reddit because of the anonymity.” He used to feel uncomfortable when looking at the images, but he has had to take down so many to keep the group “clean” that he’s now “numb to it.” Chatting with other moderators provides welcome emotional and practical support as they work to evolve their processes. Watching the Americans Get Money, Debate Politics
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman at the March 21, 2024 IPO. (Credit: Spencer Platt / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images)
Despite all his work, Hi There missed out on a golden opportunity to cash in on his contributions. When Reddit went public last month, he received an email offering early access to bid on shares, but couldn’t participate because he is not a US resident and does not have a Social Security number. As SFGate reports, it was another story for some American moderators.”The general population of Reddit is American so they probably took advantage of that and I was an exception,” he says. “You can’t make everybody happy.” Most of the political discussions in r/ChatGPT are US-centric as well, so Hi There maintains a diverse group of moderators who are equipped to handle it. He watches as people debate how “woke” ChatGPT is, including a recent controversy about Google Gemini “failing to show any white people” in its AI-generated images. It doesn’t bother him, although these conversations can create unmanageable content-moderation issues. “During those times, Reddit sends a mod mail and says, ‘Let us know if you need any help managing this,'” Hi There says. “We had to remove a lot of posts, the racist comments, and when that happens we just hope it will go down so it can function normally.” An OpenAI ‘Ask Me Anything’?The next big thing for the subreddit could harken back to its early days as a free focus group for OpenAI. One member of the moderation team is currently in touch with OpenAI about a potential “Ask My Anything” event—a live Q&A in which an OpenAI employee would answer questions on the subreddit for few hours—though a date for the event isn’t set, or even confirmed.One big conversation topic would likely center around the rumored release of GPT-5. “That’s something people are discussing a lot these days,” Hi There says, particularly because models like Claude have proven more powerful than GPT-4. AI enthusiasts are wondering when OpenAI will respond with a new showstopper, though the recently released GPT-4 Turbo model could be an intermediate step before GPT-5. An independent testing site recently found that GPT-4 Turbo overtook Claude on its leaderboard of top AI models.The Sora video generator could be another hot topic, as well as Sam Altman’s ousting and broader questions such as when artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be achieved.In the meantime, Hi There will continue running the group and is taking applications for more moderators. “There is no expiration date on it as long as the product stays relevant and people are using it,” he says. “If I don’t have time I could choose to pass it on, but I think it has made a very good niche for itself.”
Get Our Best Stories!
Sign up for What’s New Now to get our top stories delivered to your inbox every morning.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
