Generative AI, Wikimedia and a mission for 2030
Open Future and Wikimedia CH have published a white paper on how the Wikimedia movement should respond to the disruptive effect generative AI is having on the open knowledge commons. The paper provides an overview of how online knowledge ecosystems have changed over time, beginning with search engines, through social media, and now with emerging AI technologies. This latest shift is presented as having broken the foundations that once sustained Wikipedia, with AI systems syphoning its data without returning value, exacerbating falling online traffic and threatening the future of Wikimedia.
After providing an overview of the background and challenges facing Wikimedia, the paper urges a shift towards a more assertive policy approach with a mission for 2030:
To work in coalition with public AI developers and commons-aligned partners to build and govern the interfaces and infrastructures through which the knowledge commons are produced and reach readers. The aim is for the Wikimedia Movement to remain one of the primary user-facing knowledge interfaces, with agency over how knowledge is produced and used in the AI era.
A two-forked approach to the mission is proposed, centring around: (1) pro commons governance, and (2) a Wiki AI technical stack.