Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, expressed his views on the current state of AI and its future prospects in an interview with Euronews Next recently. In the interview, Wales criticized the current version of ChatGPT, particularly its use for creating Wikipedia content, calling it “terrible” and ineffective, noting that it often produces plausible but incorrect information and even fabricates sources. Despite these shortcomings, Wales sees potential in AI, suggesting it could eventually surpass human capabilities, although he believes its primary role will be to assist in intellectual tasks.
Addressing the recent upheaval at OpenAI, including the temporary ousting of CEO Sam Altman, Wales described the situation as worrisome but likely to be a temporary disturbance. He reiterated the importance of stable governance and decision-making in startups.
Wales also discussed the possibility of integrating AI into Wikipedia, stating that a tool designed to detect errors in articles could be beneficial. He is open to collaborating with an open-source AI company, aligning with Wikipedia’s principles, but highlighted the need for caution in such partnerships to avoid dependency on external technologies.
“Most businesses, not just charities like us, would say you have to be really, really careful if you’re going to put at the heart of your business a technology that’s controlled by someone else because if they go in a different direction, your whole business may be at risk,” he said.
He further talked about the challenges Wikipedia faces in maintaining accuracy and avoiding bias, as these issues directly impact the quality of information used by generative AI. Wales acknowledged the difficulty in addressing historical and unconscious bias but stressed the importance of diversity in combating these issues.
“It’s a real problem and obviously we feel a heavy responsibility to the extent that the world depends on Wikipedia and AI models depend on Wikipedia,” said Wales. “We don’t want to teach robots to be biased, so we want to get it right as at the sort of the human heart of the whole thing”.
Regarding his views on social media, Wales launched his own platform, Trust Cafe, which he describes as a friendly, open-source community. He envisions it as a blend of Twitter and Reddit, focusing on empowering trusted members and fostering discussions without character limits or singular ownership of topics.
“You can’t both run a toxic platform and expect advertisers to give you money, so that might change things,” Wales said, adding that he and Musk are “friendly” and do text and that the exchanges are “pleasant”. “Reddit is both fantastic and horrible. Whereas we’re really pursuing a model that’s much more the governance is across everything,” he added.
Wales also stated that if a platform is managed by fundamentally sensible people with sufficient power, it would generally be a sensible platform. He acknowledged that there will always be some level of craziness and debates that may turn ugly, attributing this to human nature. However, he said that as long as the core direction of the platform is maintained healthily, it can become an open and interesting space where genuine engagement with ideas is possible.
Finally, Wales predicted that achieving superhuman AI might take at least 50 years, demonstrating a cautious yet optimistic outlook on the future of AI technology.
Featured image: Credit: Zachary McCune, Wikipedia
