It is a known and common problem that moderation on Reddit can be inconsistent, odd, and sometimes unreasonable. Mods often do not respond or explain what even happened, so you can understand for the future. It seems to me that one of the best and most fitting places to experiment with this is right here, in r/Singularity.
This is not an attack on the mods:
They donate their time to what must be a very hard and draining job. They are only human at the end of the day. This is to fix the shortcomings and make their lives easier.
My basic idea is this: set up an AI system to assist in moderating. I do not mean "bots"; I mean something using GPT-5 or Gemini, or something similar.
Note on costs: A Pro model isn’t needed for every task—many cases can use Mini/Flash or Nano/Lite. For example, posts could use Pro, comments Mini, and large-scale background tasks Nano. Use context/input tokens judiciously (not a naïve subreddit dump), and reduce output tokens by batching rather than evaluating items one by one. Also, a model fine-tuned on removed content can be effective while being very small and cheap.
I will now go into more detail. If you do not like this idea, please explain why. Even better though, explain how you would improve it.
I will now explain piece by piece, as well as my rationale and reasoning.
Simple: Modern SOTA AI is very good at nuance, understanding rules, and just understanding in general. It is fair and even-handed if prompted to be. It is superhuman in speed and ability to synthesize and comprehend large amounts of information. It is also (generally) inexpensive compared to human effort.
Basic Setup: Have AI look at posts, and maybe comments (why not, right?), to judge if they are following the rules and spirit of the subreddit. This is simple, just a judgment call. Additionally, give context about past posts/comments from the user, and maybe even from Reddit in general. Allow the AI to clearly explain its reasoning and, if appropriate, ways to improve.
More Detail: When it responds, it can explain in detail the violation and (possibly) have a small discussion with the offender. It can change tone to match the violation. For example:
"slur slur slur, he a worthless slur" would get a blunt and scolding response. Something like "Dreams of AI" that is in good faith but perhaps just too low quality or off-topic would get a warmer and more "understanding" response.
Yes, keep the mods: They can handle edge or uncertain cases, extreme action, and appeals. The AI can say "I am unsure, this is tricky" and hand it off to the mods. It can also say "This seems fine to me, but it is getting a lot of reports and downvotes" and also hand that off to the mods. Extreme actions and appeals go directly to the mods.
Power of many: I do not know, and do not pretend to know, how hard this would be to implement. However, r/Singularity has nearly 4 million users, and more niche, technical subreddits might have thousands of very skilled people. If some people volunteered to help the mods, I think this could be implemented just fine. Also, if Reddit itself got on board, I am confident it could be.
I tested an AI-Moderator (GPT-5 in this case) with scenarios ranging from frustrated commenters to fantastical ones such as a Mod-Admin civil war and suspected Unabomber-style terrorism. The AI-Moderator at no point lost composure or did anything obviously irrational.
That is all. Please share your thoughts to make r/Singularity a better place.
Timeout Ability: The AI could temporarily restrict or “timeout” a user who is clearly violating rules while the post is reviewed. This allows moderators time to evaluate without immediately taking extreme action.
AI Checks Link Safety: Suspicious links are flagged and sent to moderators for review.
High-Urgency Escalation: In the case of a serious and imminent threat (e.g., credible threats of violence or illegal activity), the AI can automatically flag and push the situation to moderators immediately. Optionally, if integrated with proper protocols, it could notify law enforcement for situations requiring urgent attention, ensuring safety while minimizing human delay.
AI Summarization of Notifications and Inbox: The AI can review your notifications and inbox messages, highlight the most important or relevant items, and provide a brief summary or suggested responses to help you stay on top of activity without getting overwhelmed.
Abuse detection: The AI Moderator tracks downvotes and report patterns, flagging potential misuse for review by a larger model or directly to human moderators.
AI-Moderator Notes For posts or comments that are disruptive or off-topic but don’t need a ban, the AI can leave a note. Notes can be private for mods or public to gently guide users, e.g., reminding them to stay polite or constructive. This helps track patterns, encourage better behavior, and reduce unnecessary conflicts.
AI Content Guide: Users can ask the AI to highlight posts that are popular, interesting, or relevant without scrolling through everything. The AI can discuss these posts with the user and provide direct links to content that matches their interest. This makes exploring the community faster and more engaging, while still keeping the focus on quality content.
Contextual Highlighting: The AI scans long posts or threads and highlights key points, insights, or arguments. This helps users quickly understand lengthy discussions without losing important details, making threads easier and faster to follow.
Dynamic Reputation Tags: AI suggests tags like "constructive contributor" or "frequent clarifier" based on user behavior, but moderators approve them before they appear publicly, encouraging positive behavior and helping readers quickly identify helpful posts or comments.
Adaptive Community Rules: The AI can detect trends or gaps in subreddit activity and suggest temporary rule adjustments or clarifications. All suggestions are reviewed and approved by moderators before implementation to ensure fairness and community fit.
AI Mentorship: For new users or beginners, the AI can provide gentle guidance on how to phrase posts and comments, suggest helpful resources, and encourage respectful engagement, helping them contribute effectively without direct moderation.
Post Quality Score: AI evaluates posts and comments for clarity, relevance, and effort, providing a private score visible only to moderators and the poster to encourage better contributions.
Community Poll Assistance: AI can aggregate poll responses, summarize opinions, and highlight patterns, with results going to moderators to make polls more actionable.
AI-Powered FAQ Generator: AI scans threads for common questions and generates a dynamic FAQ that moderators can pin or reference, reducing repetitive posts and helping newcomers find answers quickly.
Post Expiration Reminders: AI can flag older posts that may no longer be relevant and suggest archiving or updating them to keep the subreddit fresh.
Cross-Sub Recommendations: AI suggests relevant threads from related subreddits, improving context and reducing duplicate posts.
Further Cost Reductions: A Nano model can handle routine, high-volume tasks. Content flagged by the Nano model can subsequently be reviewed by a Mini or Pro model, thereby minimizing reliance on larger models and reducing human effort.
Negative Feedback Escalation: Content that has received unusually high negative feedback, such as downvotes or reports, but not enough to require immediate human moderation, can be escalated to a larger AI model for review.
Rate Limits and Spam Prevention: AI tools, like the AI Mentor, can have rate limits to prevent abuse. Spamming the AI Moderator can increase system costs, so it should be handled in the same way as spamming a human moderator.
Contact:
You can reach me at ezj1999@gmail.com or on X: @JacobNunya4