ChatGPT Didn't Replace Reddit: People Still Ask Humans for Help
New research says we never stopped asking strangers online for advice.
When ChatGPT arrived, plenty of experts predicted the end of a familiar internet habit: posting a question in a forum and waiting for a stranger to answer. Why ask Reddit when a chatbot replies in two seconds? Two researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi decided to actually test that fear instead of assuming it. They tracked monthly posts in 26 Reddit communities built around information and advice — think personal finance, legal questions, health — and compared them with 90 similarly sized hobby communities, like gardening or gaming, where AI is a poor substitute for other enthusiasts. The comparison ran across the same six months before and after ChatGPT's launch.
The answer: people did not stop asking. Posting in advice communities dipped by less than 3.4% at most, while earlier papers had reported drops of 8% to 25%. That gap matters because a small dip is basically noise — the kind of normal ebb and flow any online forum sees.
But steady post counts could hide a sneakier problem: what if AI-written questions were filling the space where human questions used to be? To check, the researchers ran AI-detection software over 274,411 posts and 223,775 comments — and calibrated it so that false alarms on genuine human writing cancelled out. AI-written posts rose only 2 to 3 percentage points more in advice communities than in hobby ones. That's not enough to disguise even the smallest decline earlier studies reported. Notably, the replies people received showed no such rise at all — suggesting humans are still doing the answering, not chatbots.
So why do published studies disagree so loudly? The authors found that different types of Reddit communities were already drifting apart before ChatGPT existed, at rates as big as the "effects" other papers reported. Without comparing communities at the same moment in time, that ordinary drift can look like ChatGPT's fault. In short: the chatbot boom didn't kill the human help desk. It just changed what else we do with our time.
- Posts in Reddit advice communities fell by less than 3.4% after ChatGPT launched — much smaller than the 8-25% drops earlier studies claimed.
- Researchers checked 274,411 posts with AI-detection software (tools that guess if text was machine-written) and found only a tiny rise in AI-authored questions.
- Replies did not show more AI writing at all, suggesting humans are still answering each other — and earlier alarm may have been a measuring mistake.
Why It Matters
Human advice communities remain valuable, so don't assume chatbots have replaced the forums you rely on.