LRN No. 41: Wikipedia is the best of humanity and Elon Musk hates it

Plus: Bonus Gift

I spent last week pretty pissed off because Microsoft Word had simultaneously upgraded and enshittified itself - and tried to charge me almost double for the privilege - without asking my permission for any of it.

I opened my laptop to see an icon permanently lodged next to my cursor - Copilot, a new AI-powered friend offering to write my article for me. No thanks.

It was almost impossible to turn the thing off. I won’t bore you with how I did it in the end (if you really want to know, this is useful) but it took several hours of tearing my hair out and cancelling my subscription.

Anyway. It made me think about why AI is now everywhere. Is anyone demanding that it be routinely added to everything? Do we actually want or need it everywhere? Or is it just being aggressively inserted into our lives as a way of getting us to pay more for things that were perfectly fine as they were?

AI also costs companies less, when it comes to customer service and content moderation. That’s working out well for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, but I don’t think it will for the rest of us. This kind of tech is fine when it works alongside humans, not instead of us. It is a tool, not a solution in itself.

If you want to see an uplifting example of the best of humanity - and a platform that has resisted enshittification by being resolutely human-powered - you need look no further than Wikipedia. The free encyclopaedia anyone can edit is arguably one of the greatest achievements of humankind over the past 25 years. It is written and moderated by an army of unpaid volunteers who do it because they believe in it.

There are people who babysit specific pages that they care about, and generalists who look out for vandalism, self-promotion, misinformation and propaganda across the site. There are bots that correct common errors like spelling and formatting mistakes, but the judgement calls on the world’s biggest encyclopaedia are invariably human.

Wikipedia really matters. More often than not, it’s the top result when you look anything up online, the basis for Google’s knowledge pane, and the place where journalists, politicians, academics and schoolkids alike first brief themselves - even though they’re unlikely to ever admit it. Getting this content right matters. And those who care about getting it right know that this can’t be left to algorithms.

One of the first features I ever had commissioned was a 2007 piece for The Times about Wikipedia editors. Back then, the fear was that it might be unreliable, or libellous, or both. “Who are we relying on when we use Wikipedia?” I asked. It turned out the answer was some really wonderful people. “We are sorting out the ocean of the internet with teaspoons,” one of them said to me. I am so glad there are still human being who are prepared to do that, for free, for the good of us all.

Needless to say, Elon Musk hates Wikipedia. In April 2023, he offered to donate $1bn to Wikipedia if it changed its name to Dickipedia.

You can donate to Wikipedia here.

The more episodes I make of The Gift, the more people get in touch with my with their extraordinary stories. There are plenty more in the pipeline, including a special bonus episode, which we’re recording as we speak. That’s out in a few weeks. Watch this space for news on that.

Things that have caught my eyes and ears:

• enjoyed the short and bittersweet A Real Pain - a kind of Jewish roadmovie

• understood around 15% of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love at the Hampstead Theatre, but it was enough to enjoy it quite a lot

• was glad to have the chance to talk about Avatar Therapy on the Guardian’s Today in Focus

• decided to give up on Season 3 of The Bear. This kind of tedious pomposity should not be encouraged. Am I wrong?