From Rabbit Holes to Recommendations: Reddit’s Vishal Gupta

Vishal Gupta, engineering manager, machine learning at Reddit, joins the podcast to explain how the social media community platform uses artificial intelligence to improve user experience and ad relevance. Much of the advertising work relies on increasingly sophisticated recommender systems that have evolved from simple collaborative filtering to deep learning and large language model–based systems capable of multimodal understanding. Vishal and Sam also explore the philosophical and ethical aspects of AI-driven platforms. Vishal emphasizes the importance of balance — between exploration and exploitation in recommendations, between advertiser goals and user experience, and between human- and machine-generated content. He argues that despite the rise of AI-generated material, authentic human conversation remains vital and even more valuable as models depend on it for training. Read the episode transcript here. Guest bio: Vishal Gupta is a seasoned engineering leader who leads multiple artificial intelligence and machine learning teams at Reddit in the ads domain. He has a decade of experience working on cutting-edge machine learning techniques at companies like DeepMind, Google, and Twitter. Gupta is passionate about applied AI research that significantly contributes to a company’s top and bottom lines. Me, Myself, and AI is a podcast produced by MIT Sloan Management Review and hosted by Sam Ransbotham. It is engineered by David Lishansky and produced by Allison Ryder. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.