What is the population of Kyiv? Who was the first president of the United States? What is the name of Taylor Swift's latest album?
A few years ago, the most obvious place to find out was Wikipedia. Now, many people will ask ChatGPT or similar AI services instead. AI chatbots do a good job of answering such simple and basic questions (partly thanks to the data they pull from Wikipedia).
But let's ask the AI chatbot a slightly different question, although not too difficult - what is the plot of the novel "Defilade in Moscow"? One of the newest and most advanced ChatGPT models offers two possible answers and immediately hallucinates in both - starting with the fact that it incorrectly names the author of the novel.
A better-worded query or a more specialized tool would probably have yielded better results. But this example illustrates that you can't be sure that an AI chatbot's response has been verified by someone and isn't a hallucination. Unlike, for example, the Wikipedia article about this novel .
Of course, there are many ways to use AI for good. But getting verified information about something is actually very often not one of them. Even for simple fact-finding, Wikipedia commands more trust than the most advanced AI tools.
Yes, Wikipedia is not perfect. It makes mistakes, and some articles are not of the best quality. But Wikipedia remains a collection of knowledge that is created and verified by people.
Wikipedia is written by real people. They read sources and use them to write new texts. They fact-check, edit articles, argue about their content, and strive to build a place that provides free and open access to all of humanity's knowledge.
What Wikipedia is today is the result of the work of many thousands of volunteers. This is especially important at a time when the internet is filled with low-quality content generated by artificial intelligence without real analysis.
Wikipedia operates on a non-profit model. It does not charge for access, does not monetize the attention of its readers (unlike all major social networks), and does not use their personal data.
Wikipedia is completely transparent. Anyone can see what's "under the hood" of each article and how it has evolved since its creation. For example, you can view the entire history of edits to an article since its inception.
Importantly, Wikipedia is one of the largest data sources for ChatGPT and other AI services . Large language models are trained on the Wikipedia article corpus: Wikipedia's license allows this.
Artificial intelligence technologies are beneficial if used correctly. Even in Wikipedia itself. But they cannot replace Wikipedia.
To keep Wikipedia alive and providing value, it needs your support. It could be a few minutes of your time to fix an error in an article. It could be a small financial donation. Or just go to Wikipedia, read an article about the history of Catalonia or the latest Quentin Tarantino film, find something interesting for yourself and enjoy free access to knowledge.