Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong
wired ·
Wikipedians initially believed AI would be a temporary disruption that might even assist with housekeeping tasks, but they were wrong as AI has become an existential threat to the platform. By 2026, widespread AI-generated content led to a ban on using large language models for writing, restricting them to minor proofreading roles. The rise of AI Overviews in search engines has caused a significant decline in Wikipedia traffic, with readership dropping by over a billion visits per month since 2022. This shift threatens not just website metrics but the very human curation and passion that define the encyclopedia's value. Critics warn that without human editors, Wikipedia risks becoming a soulless artifact used merely to train future AI models. Beyond technology, the article suggests this decline marks the end of the Enlightenment-era belief in a single, unified source of objective knowledge. The enduring legacy of Wikipedia may lie less in its contents than in its process of diverse, collaborative human effort.
wired