Much of wikipedia is written by one person, Steven Pruitt. He has created more than 33,000 Wikipedia articles. People rightly credit him for cataloging obscure topics even though much of what he writes is rote.
But now when AI does it, it's deemed bad? If it's factual and at all useful to someone, why not leave it? I feel like we're waging the same battles when Wikipedia became an open encyclopedia. Surely you need to control who can edit right? We all know how that ended.
There will be a point in the future, possibly near future, when AI will be capable of reliably producing encyclopedic content, and we'll have tools to verify that the content produced passes reasonable standards.
Today is not the day. Especially not regarding the verification.
That's really not how probabilistic systems work though. They're great at getting 80% of the way to the goal but the last 20% is always excruciatingly difficult. I really don't intend that a knock because LLMs are useful, but they also aren't magic boxes where anything is possible.
Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Its editors are parroting secondary sources. (No disrespect intended.) There's no reason why LLMs couldn't be good at that.
I would rather be worried about the quality of all the primary and secondary sources going forward.
There is a reason why LLMs can not be good at this: They don't know what they are quoting or citing. A different kind of model with factoid provenance could do it?
What do you mean by this? I have passed very large documents into LLMs and they are able to accurately extract quotes and identify their location in the source documents. I don’t see any reason to think that they couldn’t accurately quote from and cite existing literature.
Why to multiply instead of going to the same place for knowledge? It is almost like you want to make a different Wikipedia for conservatives and liberals because one cannot tolerate a tone or style of the other. Probably we should dedicate dozens of sites for the same topic depending on the writing styles of the humans too. There are a few out there.
In worst case we might have an 'AI language' (or languages) instead, so the sensitive souls could find a safe heaven from it elsewhere, choosing something else. Perhaps one along the idea of 'simple English', have it 'AI English'. Or something else satisfies those looking for a specific way of delivery they can handle exclusively.
I think knowledge is the important here, not the tone.
Honestly Wikipedia is just fine being written by humans. It's not the lack of copy that is holding Wikipedia back.
However,
> Perhaps one along the idea of 'simple English', have it 'AI English'.
That's actually an interesting idea. It could work, but I don't personally think it would be better than the English Wikipedia.
Also, are you expecting that humans would still be on the loop by deciding what gets added to AI English Wikipedia, or you think that LLMs should get to decide that too?
> It is almost like you want to make a different Wikipedia for conservatives and liberals because one cannot tolerate a tone or style of the other.
Many conservative worldview elements such as climate change denialism, creationism or anti LGBT view (e.g. LGBT being "unnatural") are not backed by reality because they run counter to scientifical consensus. And that's before we go into the outlandish bullshit conspiracy crap like "ZOG/zionist occupied government", "flat earth", "9/11 was faked", "the moon landing was faked" and the likes that gains more and more momentum among "conservative" people.
You cannot make a Wikipedia appealing to conservatives.
Not sure what question you're supposing he asked which was in the article. OP's point seemed to be that correct words written by a human could be effectively the same as correct words written by a machine, supposing the machine managed to be correct by learning from human content. The 'obvious' part is this wouldn't be true if the AI content was incorrect. At least that is what I got.
Much of wikipedia is written by one person, Steven Pruitt. He has created more than 33,000 Wikipedia articles. People rightly credit him for cataloging obscure topics even though much of what he writes is rote.
But now when AI does it, it's deemed bad? If it's factual and at all useful to someone, why not leave it? I feel like we're waging the same battles when Wikipedia became an open encyclopedia. Surely you need to control who can edit right? We all know how that ended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pruitt
Almost all of these websites or platforms are doing these massive cleanup to remove ai content from them. Well appreciated.
Related:
"Low-background Steel: content without AI contamination (jgc.org)" 10.jun.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44239481 269 comments
"Wikipedia: Database Download (wikipedia.org)" 27.apr.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43811732 99 comments
"Low Background Steel (lowbackgroundsteel.ai)" 27.apr.2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814531 2 comments
There will be a point in the future, possibly near future, when AI will be capable of reliably producing encyclopedic content, and we'll have tools to verify that the content produced passes reasonable standards.
Today is not the day. Especially not regarding the verification.
That's really not how probabilistic systems work though. They're great at getting 80% of the way to the goal but the last 20% is always excruciatingly difficult. I really don't intend that a knock because LLMs are useful, but they also aren't magic boxes where anything is possible.
Grokipedia serves as an existence proof that it is possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grokipedia#:~:text=that%20arti... It literally states itself on the frontpage that it's bad.
Funny though, as that admission of error makes it more reliable than if it tried to hide this fact.
A parrot can be never a true source of information.
Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Its editors are parroting secondary sources. (No disrespect intended.) There's no reason why LLMs couldn't be good at that.
I would rather be worried about the quality of all the primary and secondary sources going forward.
There is a reason why LLMs can not be good at this: They don't know what they are quoting or citing. A different kind of model with factoid provenance could do it?
>They don't know what they are quoting or citing.
What do you mean by this? I have passed very large documents into LLMs and they are able to accurately extract quotes and identify their location in the source documents. I don’t see any reason to think that they couldn’t accurately quote from and cite existing literature.
Then what you've said isn't true: it parrots an existing talking point, adding nothing.
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You can always read Grokipedia if this feels like a lost opportunity to you.
Not sure if you're being snarky or not, but the period at the end makes me think yes
What else would end the sentence?
A question mark? :)
Why to multiply instead of going to the same place for knowledge? It is almost like you want to make a different Wikipedia for conservatives and liberals because one cannot tolerate a tone or style of the other. Probably we should dedicate dozens of sites for the same topic depending on the writing styles of the humans too. There are a few out there.
In worst case we might have an 'AI language' (or languages) instead, so the sensitive souls could find a safe heaven from it elsewhere, choosing something else. Perhaps one along the idea of 'simple English', have it 'AI English'. Or something else satisfies those looking for a specific way of delivery they can handle exclusively.
I think knowledge is the important here, not the tone.
> Why to multiply instead of going to the same place for knowledge?
Why write more than a book instead of just putting everything into one book?
This is a way of thinking from which it is hard to get out, I have no idea how to point it to you.
LLMs can't know things. They have no concept of veracity. In a place for knowledge they'd better be left out.
In case you were not aware, Grokipedia is not merely "conservative", but literally AI generated.
There is already a different Wikipedia for conservatives, https://www.conservapedia.com
Honestly Wikipedia is just fine being written by humans. It's not the lack of copy that is holding Wikipedia back.
However,
> Perhaps one along the idea of 'simple English', have it 'AI English'.
That's actually an interesting idea. It could work, but I don't personally think it would be better than the English Wikipedia.
Also, are you expecting that humans would still be on the loop by deciding what gets added to AI English Wikipedia, or you think that LLMs should get to decide that too?
Yes, why even put the slop on Wikipedia when you can get it directly from the source.
> It is almost like you want to make a different Wikipedia for conservatives and liberals because one cannot tolerate a tone or style of the other.
Many conservative worldview elements such as climate change denialism, creationism or anti LGBT view (e.g. LGBT being "unnatural") are not backed by reality because they run counter to scientifical consensus. And that's before we go into the outlandish bullshit conspiracy crap like "ZOG/zionist occupied government", "flat earth", "9/11 was faked", "the moon landing was faked" and the likes that gains more and more momentum among "conservative" people.
You cannot make a Wikipedia appealing to conservatives.
"if correct, obviously" - please elaborate. I do not see how this is obvious. Or how being correct is obvious.
Not to mention this exact question is being discussed in the article.
Not sure what question you're supposing he asked which was in the article. OP's point seemed to be that correct words written by a human could be effectively the same as correct words written by a machine, supposing the machine managed to be correct by learning from human content. The 'obvious' part is this wouldn't be true if the AI content was incorrect. At least that is what I got.
What about:
Correct information written by AI vs incorrect, biased information written by humans?
As if AI output isn't biased?