Wikipedia has revealed its strategic vision for AI over the next three years, and in a notable departure from industry trends, the online encyclopedia isn't planning to replace its human editors with AI.
Key Points:
- Wikipedia's strategy focuses on using AI to automate routine tasks, allowing editors to focus on specialized knowledge and human judgment
- The approach explicitly rejects replacing human editors with AI-generated content, positioning Wikipedia against the industry trend
- Implementation will prioritize open-source technologies and transparency while supporting content integrity and new editor onboarding
The strategy, authored by Wikimedia Foundation's Chris Albon and Leila Zia, instead takes a "human-centered approach" that positions AI as a tool to "remove technical barriers" for Wikipedia's volunteer community. Rather than focusing on what AI can do, the plan emphasizes what editors want to accomplish without getting bogged down in technical implementation.
"While companies are leaning away from human-created knowledge, we should lean in on the collective power of editors and use AI to assist them," the strategy document states. This philosophy stands in stark contrast to the direction many content platforms have taken, where automated generation increasingly displaces human curation.
Wikipedia's leadership made several critical tradeoffs in developing their approach. Most significantly, they're prioritizing content integrity over content generation—focusing first on equipping moderators with AI tools to combat misinformation before developing features that might accelerate content creation. This decision acknowledges that AI-generated content could potentially overwhelm human verification systems if deployed without proper safeguards.
The strategy identifies four primary areas where AI can uniquely support Wikipedia's mission:
- Assisting content moderators and patrollers
- Automating repetitive tasks to free up time for human judgment and discussion
- Helping editors share local perspectives across languages
- Providing guided mentorship for newcomers.
For an internet increasingly cluttered with AI-generated content of questionable quality, Wikipedia's stance represents a calculated bet that human judgment will remain valuable in knowledge creation. "We are betting that [people] will want to rely on real people to be the arbiters of knowledge," the document states.
The implementation prioritizes open-source AI technologies—though the Foundation acknowledges it lacks resources to develop its own foundational models from scratch—and emphasizes transparency throughout the development process. The strategy will be revisited annually, with provisions for more frequent updates if major AI breakthroughs occur.