ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence systems used human-generated information, and when we look into the future, there is only one thing visible; Now people will benefit from the information produced by artificial intelligence. In this context, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, conveyed his thoughts on how the world’s largest online encyclopedia will evolve in the coming years.
ChatGPT will not write articles for Wikipedia for now
Wales says there is cautious excitement in the Wikipedia community as it is known that existing models are not good enough. “I think we’re still a long way from saying ‘ChatGPT, please write a Wikipedia article on the Empire State Building,’ but I don’t know how far we are from that. But we are certainly closer to that than I thought two years ago,” Wales said in an interview.
Wales notes that although ChatGPT has captured the world’s imagination over the past few weeks, its own testing of the technology still has many flaws. These flaws are that artificial intelligence produces unreal information, which is defined as “artificial intelligence hallucination”. According to Wales, ChatGPT has a tendency to make up things out of the blue, and that would be very bad for Wikipedia.
Researching uses for ChatGPT
One of the criticisms leveled at Wikipedia is that it includes bias, both in the way volunteers describe certain topics and in the way they choose which topics deserve more or less prominence. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia’s multi-million volunteer army is male and white, which inevitably means that they may – albeit unintentionally – interpret events in the world from a male and white-centered perspective. However, according to Wales, the solution to this is not in ChatGPT, at least not in its current form. Because, as you know, ChatGPT consists of the data it is trained on and this data already has biases. Therefore, it is stated that an artificial intelligence-supported Wikipedia will not put an end to prejudices, on the contrary, it will exacerbate them. However, there are areas where it can be useful.
Using ChatGPT can be beneficial in areas such as correcting missing or outdated parts of existing articles, increasing Wiki entries, and filling in gaps in articles. According to Wales, using AI to triple the number of new articles or entries on Wikipedia will not increase costs by more than $1,200 per year. So ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for creating Wikipedia articles. In the near term, it is unlikely to create content on its own.