Knowledge isn’t knowledge in itself — it’s about how people organize it.
With more AI tools mining existing knowledge and presenting it in increasingly accessible ways, I don’t think AI search fundamentally changes how information and knowledge are organized.
Of course, AI could reshape the organization of knowledge through areas like:
1. Fact-checking and sourcing
2. Drafting new pages
3. Editing and refining wording
…and more
---
Just like Wikipedia already has many bots running behind the scenes, if all these tasks were eventually handled by AI, there would still be things left for humans (or perhaps another AI) to decide:
1. When a fact has multiple perspectives, how should it be phrased to represent different viewpoints fairly?
> I still remember countless word battles on Wikipedia over this.
2. In the age of smartphones and social media, historical moments are documented not only by journalists or influencers but by thousands — even millions — of ordinary people. How should Wikipedia process and summarize such vast, distributed facts?
3. How do we properly incentivize contributors, whether human or AI?
> Wikipedia was born in an era when the Internet lacked reliable information, and building a shared, sustainable, independent knowledge base was a mission that resonated with its early contributors — traffic rewards came later.
4. And of course, geopolitics — Wikipedia must remain independent.
---
A bit of background: I once led a Chinese wiki product, but I eventually gave up on it — because almost no one cared why a wiki should exist beyond being just another searchable content platform.