We take it for granted today, but Wikipedia is a crazy idea that succeeded and represents the best that humanity has to offer.
Every now and then I visit Wikipedia and admire it. The level of detail, the breakdown of an idea to an overview of the latest thoughts on a topic, it's all great and informative. I will admit that it is not a page that contains only clear information and that like everything on the internet it needs filtering.
But let's backtrack a bit and pretend we're taking a trip to the Internet of 2001 and we want to convince a room full of venture capitalists to throw their money at an online encyclopedia idea.
It's called Wikipedia and it will be a free, online, multilingual encyclopedia. Its content will be created, edited and verified by the general public. Anyone and everyone with an internet connection and a browser will be able to contribute.
Yes correctly. Anonymous people on the internet, by all accounts, even if they have no knowledge. You would of course laugh when the announcement to entrepreneurs stated that the new website would not display ads and would survive purely on donations.
And yet we are in 2023, more than two decades later, and Wikipedia hasn't just survived. It has blossomed. It is a repository of human knowledge, a choice for students doing their homework, and the quiet cornerstone of countless disputes from around the world.
The concept of Wikipedia operates on the edge of improbability and absolute chaos. In the grand symphony of the Internet, Wikipedia is like the improvisational offbeat of jazz inexplicably coming together into a coherent musical masterpiece.
What is the lesson from Wikipedia's success?
The improbable can happen when we let go of all the rigid rules that limit our imaginations, opening ourselves up to the possibilities of distributed intelligence and the anarchic yet productive power of the crowd.
It lacks the structure and security of a proven business model. It is a model that dances with an absurdity that relies on pure altruism for its survival and revels in the chaos of crowdsourced intelligence.
Wikipedia has turned this idea of chaos into a radical democratization of knowledge. The cooperators, a motley crew of oddballs armed with knowledge and internet connections, play the role of orchestra as well as conductor. It is very likely that a post by Aunt Mary about the earth being flat will be checked by a physics professor on the other side of the world. Each cacophony leads not to noise, but to a dynamic and evolving melody.
The idea of decentralization and the wisdom of crowds is nothing new. We see this in financial markets, where thousands of people participate in price discovery, their collective decisions often predicting outcomes better than experts. It is in a "free market of ideas" where the best thoughts and concepts, in theory at least, rise to the top.
But Wikipedia is not just an information marketplace, but an information community, where those with knowledge freely give to those without. It is as much about collective action as it is about collective wisdom and the urge to share knowledge.
The future, if Wikipedia's success is any indication, will further challenge our traditional notions of authority and expertise.
Here comes the looming future of artificial intelligence (AI) and big, open-source language models – a conversation that seems as complicated and crazy as it did in that venture capitalist room in 2001. Imagine going back to that room, but this time present not an open source encyclopedia, but a colossal open source artificial intelligence model capable of understanding and generating human language with incredible accuracy, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
There will be doubts and cloudy faces. Businessmen will be skeptical but there will also be curiosity.
“And who will train and control this AI?” one of them asks.
"Everyone," you say. “It will be open source. Anyone who has the time and inclination will be able to contribute, shaping the model, improving their skills".
Pandemonium. Cries of "Impossible!", "Too risky!" and "absolute chaos!".
Like Wikipedia, the idea of open source AI walks the fine line between chaotic madness and intelligent discovery. The concerns are of course real, from the risk of misuse to issues of quality control and accuracy.
This is where the Wikipedia model can teach us things: in the collective chaos, an agreement can be written. The stakes can be higher and the proscalls very complex, yet the possibilities are breathtaking.
The room of 2001 may have laughed at Wikipedia. The room of 2023 may well challenge the idea of open source AI. Yet two decades from now, we may be sitting here marveling at how a group of anonymous internet users trained an AI model that not only understands human language, but respects its nuances and complexities.
AI introduces a sense of immediacy and personalization. Unlike a static Wikipedia page, AI can interact, clarify and tailor answers to individual questions. It doesn't just return knowledge like a search engine. It reframes, recontextualizes, and responds in a way that aligns with the user's query.
As we enter this new era, it is necessary to remember the lessons of Wikipedia. Its success came not only from the information it hosted, but from its principles: decentralization, collaboration, transparency and adaptability. As we design AI systems, we must encode these principles into their DNA.
We must guard against the concentration of power and knowledge. AI models should not be owned by a few tech giants. In an age of information overload, we should not underestimate the power of collective wisdom in shaping AI tools.
It may sound as chaotic and improbable as Wikipedia did two decades ago, but there is something Wikipedia has shown us: chaos and improbability are exactly what is needed for innovation to thrive.
In a sense, Wikipedia's existence is much less of a triumph for it technology and more the triumph of mankind. I personally wouldn't want artificial intelligence models that the well-known tech oligarchs are behind?
Wikipedia's story is a beautiful reminder that sometimes, the most powerful ideas are also the ones that seem the craziest and most dangerous. The future is a blank page, let's be careful who writes.
I'd rather we write it ourselves.
