Interesting article, with the conflict of old and new, even online.
Wikipedia’s Moment of Truth
Can the online encyclopedia help teach A.I. chatbots to get their facts right — without destroying itself in the process?
By Jon Gartner
The goal of Wikipedia, as its co-founder Jimmy Wales described it in 2004, was to create “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” The following year, Wales also stated, “We help the internet not suck.” Wikipedia now has versions in 334 languages and a total of more than 61 million articles. It consistently ranks among the world’s 10 most-visited websites yet is alone among that select group (whose usual leaders are Google, YouTube and Facebook) in eschewing the profit motive. Wikipedia does not run ads, except when it seeks donations, and its contributors, who make about 345 edits per minute on the site, are not paid. In seeming to repudiate capitalism’s imperatives, its success can seem surprising, even mystifying. Some Wikipedians remark that their endeavor works in practice, but not in theory...
For that reason, the rollout of ChatGPT did not elicit surprise inside the Wikipedia community — though several editors told me they were shocked by the speed of its adoption, which needed just two months after its release in late 2022 to gain an estimated 100 million users. Despite its stodgy appearance, Wikipedia is more tech-savvy than casual users might assume. With a small group of volunteers to oversee millions of articles, it has long been necessary for highly experienced editors, often known as administrators, to use semiautomated software to identify misspellings and catch certain forms of intentional misinformation...
For the whole article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/magazine/wikipedia-ai-chatgpt.html
https://dnyuz.com/2023/07/18/wikipedias-moment-of-truth/
Wikipedia’s Moment of Truth
Can the online encyclopedia help teach A.I. chatbots to get their facts right — without destroying itself in the process?
By Jon Gartner
The goal of Wikipedia, as its co-founder Jimmy Wales described it in 2004, was to create “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” The following year, Wales also stated, “We help the internet not suck.” Wikipedia now has versions in 334 languages and a total of more than 61 million articles. It consistently ranks among the world’s 10 most-visited websites yet is alone among that select group (whose usual leaders are Google, YouTube and Facebook) in eschewing the profit motive. Wikipedia does not run ads, except when it seeks donations, and its contributors, who make about 345 edits per minute on the site, are not paid. In seeming to repudiate capitalism’s imperatives, its success can seem surprising, even mystifying. Some Wikipedians remark that their endeavor works in practice, but not in theory...
For that reason, the rollout of ChatGPT did not elicit surprise inside the Wikipedia community — though several editors told me they were shocked by the speed of its adoption, which needed just two months after its release in late 2022 to gain an estimated 100 million users. Despite its stodgy appearance, Wikipedia is more tech-savvy than casual users might assume. With a small group of volunteers to oversee millions of articles, it has long been necessary for highly experienced editors, often known as administrators, to use semiautomated software to identify misspellings and catch certain forms of intentional misinformation...
For the whole article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/magazine/wikipedia-ai-chatgpt.html
https://dnyuz.com/2023/07/18/wikipedias-moment-of-truth/