So, the question to ask is ...

As my loyal readers know, yours truly is a fan of Wikipedia as it's an open-source, self-correcting environment representing the best in what it means to be a free online encyclopedia for the world. With this said, the notion of AI getting in on the game is disquieting to say the least as who can you trust regarding all things relating to vetted information becomes the ultimate question in a world increasingly driven by AI. From this perspective, the notion of the matrix becomes possible, without the need for us to be a power supply, as machines, equipped with AI, are already beginning to supplant man in conducting business on planet Earth due to the fact we are so bad at doing the job. Bill Joy said it best in Why the Future Doesn't Need Us when stating ... Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.” 

It's already happening.

So, the question to ask is, will Wikipedia survive in the age of AI?

In early 2021, a Wikipedia editor peered into the future and saw what looked like a funnel cloud on the horizon: the rise of GPT-3, a precursor to the new chatbots from OpenAI. When this editor — a prolific Wikipedian who goes by the handle Barkeep49 on the site — gave the new technology a try, he could see that it was untrustworthy. The bot would readily mix fictional elements (a false name, a false academic citation) into otherwise factual and coherent answers. But he had no doubts about its potential. “I think A.I.’s day of writing a high-quality encyclopedia is coming sooner rather than later,” he wrote in “Death of Wikipedia,” an essay that he posted under his handle on Wikipedia itself. He speculated that a computerized model could, in time, displace his beloved website and its human editors, just as Wikipedia had supplanted the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which in 2012 announced it was discontinuing its print publication.

Recently, when I asked this editor — he asked me to withhold his name because Wikipedia editors can be the targets of abuse — if he still worried about his encyclopedia’s fate, he told me that the newer versions made him more convinced that ChatGPT was a threat. “It wouldn’t surprise me if things are fine for the next three years,” he said of Wikipedia, “and then, all of a sudden, in Year 4 or 5, things drop off a cliff.”

To me, the notion of AI being the consummate fake comes to mind as its take on reality is like a fabricated town in a Western, all facade and no depth in its attempt to describe the vagaries of existence without the wealth of experience we all share as humans residing on a planet called Earth. - RM

In closing, Richard Feynman said it best ...

Food for thought, eh?