AI 中文总结
本研究通过对比 ChatGPT 发布前后 Reddit 信息类与兴趣类社区的发帖量，发现信息求助未下降，排除下降超3.4%，并指出先前研究分歧源于缺乏同期对照。
AI 中文摘要
生成式人工智能能够回答问题后，人们是否不再向其他人在线寻求建议？先前关于 ChatGPT 对在线求助影响的研究在影响规模和方向上均存在分歧，部分原因在于没有研究在相同月份内，将受影响的社区与人工智能难以替代的相似社区进行比较。本文跟踪了 ChatGPT 发布前后各六个日历月内，26 个 Reddit 信息类社区与 90 个规模相当的兴趣类社区的月度发帖数量。我们还在 ChatGPT 出现之前的 66 个更早日期重复了整个分析，以观察在不存在 ChatGPT 效应时我们的方法会报告什么结果。我们发现，信息求助并未减少。我们的结果排除了发帖量下降超过 3.4% 的可能性，远小于先前研究记录的 8% 至 25% 的下降幅度。如果人工智能撰写的帖子取代了人类帖子，稳定的发帖数量仍可能具有误导性。我们通过使用人工智能文本检测器对 274,411 条帖子和 223,775 条评论进行评分来检验这种可能性，并以一种能抵消检测器对人类文本误报的方式进行对比。在信息类社区中，人工智能撰写的帖子仅比兴趣类社区高出 2-3 个百分点，低于掩盖先前报道的 Reddit 最小下降幅度所需的 5.1 个百分点。此外，人们收到的评论完全没有出现此类增长。那么，为什么已发表的研究存在分歧呢？在 ChatGPT 出现之前，Reddit 社区类型已经在以与每项已发表估计相当的速度分化，而如果没有同期对照，这种分化可能看起来像是生成式人工智能的影响。我们最大的估计是低风险好奇心社区的发帖量下降 18%，这与该社区先前存在的趋势相符。人类仍然向人类求助，而且就检测所能判断的而言，人类仍然在回答他们。
英文摘要
Did people stop asking other people for advice online once generative AI could answer their questions? Prior work on ChatGPT's effect on online help-seeking disagrees in both size and sign, in part because no study has compared affected communities against similar communities that AI cannot easily substitute for, over the same months. In this paper, we track monthly post counts in 26 Reddit informational communities against 90 size-comparable hobby communities over the same six calendar months before and after the launch of ChatGPT. We also repeat the entire analysis at 66 earlier dates, before ChatGPT existed, to see what our method reports when no ChatGPT-effect exists. We find that informational help-seeking did not decline. Our results rule out any decline in posting larger than 3.4%, far smaller than the 8% to 25% declines documented in prior work. Steady post counts could still be misleading if AI-written posts had replaced human ones. We test this possibility by scoring 274,411 posts and 223,775 comments with AI-text detectors, compared in a way that cancels out detector false-positives on human-written text. AI-written posts rose only 2-3 percentage points more in informational communities than in hobby communities, short of the 5.1 points that would be needed to hide even the smallest decline previously reported for Reddit. In addition, the comments people receive show no such rise at all. Why, then, do published studies disagree? Reddit community types were already drifting apart before ChatGPT existed, at rates comparable to every published estimate, and without same-time controls, that drift can look like an effect of generative AI. Our own largest estimate, an 18% fall in posts to low-stakes curiosity communities, matches its pre-existing trend. Humans still ask humans for help, and, as far as detection can tell, humans still answer them.
Comments15 pages, 4 figures
