Wikipedia, the most widely consulted reference work ever created, faces existential challenges from generative AI companies whose products divert traffic away from it. Helen Choi argues that academics, given their responsibilities as researchers and teachers, have an ethical duty to defend and support open knowledge communities such as Wikipedia.
When people use AI products like Google's Gemini or ChatGPT, they receive immediate answers. Although these answers sometimes link to Wikipedia, most users do not click through, choosing instead to accept machine-generated outputs without verification. If this continues, readership on Wikipedia will keep declining. That matters because Wikipedia is run by a volunteer community that writes, codes and administers the encyclopedia, and fewer readers means fewer articles, updates and corrections. The result could be a derelict and possibly defunct encyclopedia, a loss for humanity and for the AI industry itself, which relies on Wikipedia's five billion words to train its systems.
Wikipedia is also a self-governing community that exists independently of commercial or governmental control. Its volunteers produce and share knowledge for the common good, and few volunteer efforts have been more influential. It has outperformed commercial rivals such as Microsoft's Encarta and xAI's machine-generated Grokipedia, and it has been banned in some countries, including China. Yet the AI companies that now dominate online search have weakened this demoralised community. Some scrape Wikipedia's content without authorisation, while others, including Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, pay for high-speed API access, and all of them profit from volunteers' work.
Choi grounds academia's duty in Iris Marion Young's Social Connection Model, which holds that responsibility for remedying injustice follows one's connection to the structures involved. As participants in knowledge production, academics have power, resources and status well beyond those of Wikipedia's largely anonymous volunteers. They are also uniquely placed to help, since their subject expertise can fill content gaps, correct errors and add context to complex topics, while their access to high-quality sources can raise the encyclopedia's standards.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing