Wikipedia to integrate AI in its services, ‘we will prioritise...’, will it affect editors? This is what it says

Wikipedia, the famous online encyclopedia, which has for long been one of the top support for web search, has now upgraded itself. It will be integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI) within its various services, said Wikimedia, the non-profit parent company. However, the AI technology will be integrated only in few areas which, according to the NGO, would need more enhancement.   

However, amid the fears that AI would replace the jobs of employees there, Wikimedia clarified that bringing AI into its system will only lessen the burden of work for its human resource and would not replace them entirely as they would be relegated to a higher quality control mechanism.  

A statement by Wikimedia in this regard read, “We will use AI to build features that remove technical barriers to allow the humans at the core of Wikipedia to spend their valuable time on what they want to accomplish, and not on how to technically achieve it. Our investments will be focused on specific areas where generative AI excels, all in the service of creating unique opportunities that will boost Wikipedia's volunteers.” 

“We will take a human-centred approach and will prioritise human agency; we will prioritise using open-source or open-weight AI; we will prioritise transparency; and we will take a nuanced approach to multilinguality,” it added. 

Wikimedia also said that the organisation will use AI to assist editors in the recruitment of new volunteers and automating other tedious tasks. “We believe that our future work with AI will be successful not only because of what we do, but how we do it." 

Wikipedia has already integrated AI to identify vandalism, translation, and predict readability, but not in the case of editors. Selena Deckelmann Wikimedia’s Chief Product and Technology Officer answered the obvious question, whether AI and other generative technology would write the same kind of information in the same way as Wikipedia. She bluntly answers, No.  

She argues that Wikipedia’s “open, noncommercial model” makes it “trustworthy and reliable” and in the times of AI generated content it becomes “more valuable.” She further says that “new systems try to generate Wikipedia articles” which “highlight many challenges for using LLMs to produce what Wikipedians call knowledge.”