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Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'
(www.404media.co)
Why would anyone want an editor that doesn’t fact check?
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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tbh i somehow didnt even realize that wikipedia is one of the few super popular sites not trying to shove ai down my throat every 5 seconds
i'm grateful now
Don't count your chickens before they hatch, Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia and already used ChatGPT in a review process once according to this article.
damn T_T
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I will stop donating to Wikipedia if they use AI
Wikipedia already has a decades operating cost of savings.
No they don't because they blast it on inflated exec wages.
Why don't they blast execs and reduce the expenses.
Just got back from asking them. They said they like cash moneys and don't like blasting themselves.
This is such a tiresome aspect of society. Even if you believe in executives, they certainly don’t need to get paid more than anyone else.
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He can also stick AI inside his own ass
Christ, I miss when I could click on an article and not be asked to sign up for it.
Oh, right! Thanks for reminding me. I tried to archive it the last time but it took forever.
Edit. There ya' go: https://archive.is/oWcIr
You know, I remember way back in the day when…
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…and that’s why I’m no longer welcome in New Zealand. Crazy!
As I have adblock mostly because of the abuse of trackers, I understand people trying to monetize their work.
Journalists monetizing their work is totally reasonable. The problem for me is that it seems unfair to ask that literally everyone trying to read an article have to sign up. Maybe I’m missing something.
He is nobody to Wikipedia now. He also failed to create a news site and a micro SNS.
Not sure about Wikipedia, but Conservapedia would find it very useful. In fact, since most of their entries are factually incorrect and appear as fantasy I think AI writing articles would save them a lot of time.
Bonus: hallucinations can help create new conspiracy theories!
Fuck AI
Important context: he’s not suggesting AIs writing content for Wikipedia. He’s suggesting using AI to provide feedback for new editors. Take that how you will.
Right, which makes it just as bad. Wikipedia had enough proofreaders. You don't need AI for that, because the need is already filled.
This is entirely different from a book writer who is going everything solo and has exactly one publishing window.
And writing feedback software has existed for decades. So AI adds nothing new. Again it is snake oil. It is always snake oil. Except when it's bait and switch, to pretend it wasn't snake oil in the first place.
So I fed the page to ChatGPT to ask for advice. And I got what seems to me to be pretty good. And so I'm wondering if we might start to think about how a tool like AFCH might be improved so that instead of a generic template, a new editor gets actual advice. It would be better, obviously, if we had lovingly crafted human responses to every situation like this, but we all know that the volunteers who are dealing with a high volume of various situations can't reasonably have time to do it. The templates are helpful - an AI-written note could be even more helpful.
This actually sounds like a plausibly decent use for an LLM. Initial revision to take some of the load off from the human review process isn't a bad idea - he isn't advocating for AI to write articles, just that it can be useful for copy-editing and potentially supplement a system already heavy in Go/No Go evaluations.
Which is weird, really. Jimmy Wales is just fucking awful. I didn't realize he was anatomically capable of not talking out of his ass.
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