The AI threat to Wikipedia

This is a problem for Wikipedia because it is run by a volunteer community that does everything from writing, coding, and administration, and this community comes from Wikipedia’s readers. A decline in the number of readers means fewer articles, updates, and corrections – and ultimately, a derelict and quite possibly defunct encyclopedia. This would be a loss for humanity as well as for the AI industry itself, as it is heavily reliant upon Wikipedia and its five billion words for training the systems that run their products.

Wikipedia, of course, is more than training data for machines; it is a self-governing community of people that exists independently of commercial or governmental controls. This community of volunteers exists to produce and share knowledge for the common good. It is difficult to think of any other volunteer endeavour that has been more influential, pervasive, and powerful than Wikipedia. It has been more successful than commercial enterprises like Microsoft’s encyclopedia, Encarta and xAI’s machine-generated Grokipedia, and it is perceived to be so influential that it has been banned in some countries, like China.

However, the powerful AI companies that now control online search pose existential challenges for a weakened and demoralised community, as in addition to stripping Wikipedia of readers, they have misappropriated the hard work of volunteers for their own profit, reducing writing and research to machine feed. Some AI companies take Wikipedia’s content through unauthorised scraping, while others, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, pay Wikipedia for high-speed API access to its pages.

Academia’s duty to protect open knowledge

Academia’s duty to protect open knowledge like that produced on Wikipedia is grounded in its privileged position within and structural connection to knowledge. According to Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model, one’s duty to remedy injustice is determined by one’s connection to processes and structures in which one participates. As a participant in knowledge processes, academia has a responsibility to address injustices in those processes – such as those committed by the AI industry against vital sources of knowledge like Wikipedia.

With its access to resources and higher status than the largely anonymous group of Wikipedia volunteers, academia has the power and influence to address the injustice of an endangered Wikipedia, as well as the capacity to do so. As people who are trained in producing knowledge and who teach the next generation of knowledge producers, academics are in fact uniquely qualified to support Wikipedia’s current and future reserves of knowledge, as well as its community of volunteers.

How can academics support Wikipedia?

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. And academics are well-equipped to do so; their subject matter expertise can be used to address content gaps, correct errors, and provide context on complicated topics on Wikipedia. Academics’ access to and facility with high-quality sources can help improve Wikipedia’s quality. And as Wikipedia’s citation practices mirror those academic practices, academics may find editing Wikipedia to be less daunting than others do.

Along with contributing their expertise and knowledge to Wikipedia’s pages, academics can also support Wikipedia by integrating it into their scholarly work. 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.

Academics can also support Wikipedia by teaching their students how to contribute to Wikipedia. This practice can enhance knowledge and understanding about Wikipedia among future generations and has the added benefits of helping students bolster their subject matter knowledge and information literacy skills. Many instructors are already supporting Wikipedia in this way. Through the non-profit Wiki Education Foundation, more than 152,000 students at over 8,000 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada have contributed more than 125 million words to Wikipedia since 2010.

Students report that writing for Wikipedia provides them with motivation to produce high-quality writing, as they are writing for a real-world audience. Students also develop practical information literacy skills in source evaluation, copyright compliance, and source attribution. In addition, because Wikipedia currently bans AI-generated writing, instructors may find assigning Wikipedia work to be one way for students to build writing and thinking skills independently. As about 19% of Wikipedia’s new active editors come from Wiki Education’s programs, teaching students to contribute to Wikipedia is a viable way to sustain and renew it with a new generation of contributors.

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.

This post draws on the author’s article, Towards a practice of knowledge commoning: academics’ ethical duties to defend Wikipedia in the age of generative AI, published in AI and Ethics.

📨Enjoying this blogpost? Sign up to our mailing list and receive all the latest LSE Impact Blog news direct to your inbox 📨

About the author

Helen Choi is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication Practice at the University of Southern California. She teaches undergraduate courses in writing and information literacy.