Wikipedia Founder Criticizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Advocates for AI to Improve Existing Articles
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, expressed his criticism of OpenAI’s ChatGPT during the opening night of the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. Despite the focus on artificial intelligence (AI) at the summit, Wales described ChatGPT as pretty bad due to its frequent errors. According to a report by Tom’s Guide, Wales believes that it will take approximately three more decades before large language model AI can rival human capabilities.
Wales’ remarks came at a time when there is increasing popularity and concerns surrounding OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which was launched a year ago. Major tech companies like Microsoft and Google are also heavily investing in AI, with Google recently unveiling its own conversational AI service called Bard. Wales suggested that Microsoft’s collaboration with OpenAI could pose a problem for Google.
In addition, Wales took a swipe at Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter (formerly known as X) and SpaceX, along with his social media platform. He claimed that X is not a credible source for accurate information, as reported by Fortune.
During the summit, Wales emphasized that generative AI should not be used to directly write articles. Instead, he proposed using AI as a tool to enhance existing articles. For instance, AI could search various sources to identify statements missing from Wikipedia entries. It could also identify statements in specific articles that should be added to a Wikipedia entry, thus boosting productivity. While AI excels in content that has already been widely covered, its performance on more obscure topics tends to be error-prone.
Wales remarked, If you ask ChatGPT questions about someone famous or a historical topic, it is much better, but that isn’t where Wikipedia needs help. We have tons of people writing about the Battle of the Bulge or World War 2; what we need is help on more obscure topics, and on those, it makes a lot of mistakes.
Interestingly, a recent study published in the open-access journal Family Medicine and Community Health, which is owned by the British Medical Journal, revealed that ChatGPT may be better at following recognized treatment standards for clinical depression than doctors. This finding raises concerns about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on jobs and its ability to replace human expertise.
In conclusion, Jimmy Wales expressed his dissatisfaction with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, highlighting its limitations and errors. He called for AI to be used to enhance existing articles rather than solely relying on it to generate new content. Nonetheless, the debate surrounding the role of AI in various industries continues, with both its promise and potential drawbacks coming into focus.
