Academics have a duty to defend Wikipedia from the AI industry
Academics have a duty to defend open knowledge systems like Wikipedia
AI chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT answer questions using Wikipedia but rarely send readers back, and volunteer editors come from that readership. Helen Choi argues that academics, as privileged participants in knowledge production, have an ethical duty to defend Wikipedia: editing entries, citing it in research, and teaching students to contribute. She calls on universities to recognize this public service in hiring and promotion.
Academics are not the ones that have harmed Wikipedia, they – as fellow stewards of knowledge – have a duty to help defend it from those that have.
- gcanyon
I have direct experience to contradict this on several points. I was the lead product manager for answers.com for several years.
The visitors to answers.com fell into two very distinct groups: consumers and contributors (we called them the community). It was difficult to convert consumers into contributors: most of the easy questions on answers were already answered, so one of my experiments was to present an answered question as unanswered to the consumer, asking them to answer e.g. "what kind of hat was abraham lincoln famous for wearing." Anyone who answered was encouraged to register, and our community team would reach out to encourage them back. Uptake was low.
Likewise, the community did not often consume the content on answers -- they were very used to/comfortable with going out on the internet to find information, since it's what they did to answer questions on the site.
The point here is that the people contributing to wikipedia are a small subset, and possibly significantly disjoint, from the people the article is concerned won't go to wikipedia anymore because AI is now answering their questions.
And since wikipedia has no advertising, those people's absence won't be directly felt -- possible exception: I don't know the demographics of wikipedia's periodic fundraisers. Clearly if half their funding is coming from casual visitors, then that's an issue.
There is a lot of momentum and good will behind wikipedia. I don't want to deter anyone from doing more/something t […]
- 10111001
> Just as academics must cite any AI-generated machine outputs they rely upon in their research and writing, they can also cite Wikipedia if they use it in their work. Doing so can highlight Wikipedia’s value to other academics as a source of knowledge and provide greater transparency in one’s research processes. Despite longstanding skepticism of Wikipedia among some scholars, citations to Wikipedia in academic journals appear to be increasing – even in high-impact publications in subject areas like the health sciences.
As someone who's contributed to Wikipedia and seen how the sausage is made: that's stupid. Even Wikipedia itself considers wikis (including itself) to lack sufficient authority to be cited as a source.
Such citations could be easily gamed (if you cite a particular change) or are useless (the content you cite may not be there in the future), and are obvious pathways to "citogenesis."
- Animats
Such as Wikipedia. "Like" excludes the named item. When the named item is the only important one, this matters.
- mentalgear
Indeed, broadening what academic scores mean (past a citation number) and letting them be recongnized by contributing to open knowledge like wikipedia (vs closed private journals) is the counterbalance we need.
> The fulfilment of ethical obligations to support knowledge communities, however, requires support from institutions of higher education. Currently, most academics are evaluated on their scholarly and research achievements, teaching performance, and service duties to their departments. Public service, like contributing to Wikipedia, goes largely unrecognised, if it is even counted at all. If academics are to fulfil their responsibilities to protect knowledge and knowledge communities, institutions must recognise efforts like contributing to Wikipedia and provide resources and support. Doing so may also help to address the public’s eroding trust in higher education itself, as a greater commitment to serving the public would reassert the role of universities as stewards of knowledge that exist to serve humanity – a role shared by Wikipedia.
- AuthAuth
Wikipedia is being lost to ideological bias.
- jadar
I’m old enough to remember when Wikipedia was not allowed to be cited in high school papers because it wasn’t a sufficiently authoritative source. How the turn tables…
- gerdesj
What on earth did we do before WP? I'm old enough to remember the olden days before WP existed and the practice of reading the news.
I also remember the whispers and chatter outside of and around the 'papers. Those whispers etc would reinforce a later article.
What is happening now with news ie top down dissemination of world events is not new but what is different today is the immediacy of commentary by the hoi poloi - you and me and who knows what from across the world ... and bots.
I think we have to get to grips with the fact that an event happening within one corner of the world measuring an inch squared can rock up on the agenda of anyone, anywhere across the entire world.
- adsharma
What academics need to defend is wikipedia in latent space. Not walls of text that reflect the opinions of a few who have the time to edit that the rich and famous can optimize.
That is why we are building latentpedia.org.