Making sure AI serves people and knowledge stays human

Summary

At the Wikimedia Foundation, we believe that access to knowledge is a human right. Our mission is to ensure everyone, everywhere can access and share reliable information freely and openly on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Access to free and open knowledge, supported by the fundamental right to freedom of expression, empowers people to exercise many other rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the rights to education, artistic expression, economic advancement, and political participation. Today, we are sharing a human rights impact assessment (HRIA) on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that was carried out in 2024 to help the Foundation and Wikimedia volunteer communities better understand how these technologies may affect the exercise of human rights in our ecosystem.Wikimedia projects, and Wikimedia volunteers everywhere, occupy a unique space in today’s online information ecosystem. This ecosystem is, however, rapidly evolving. The introduction and rapid advancement of emerging technologies such as large language models (LLMs) and other kinds of generative AI introduce opportunities as well as challenges related to the creation, access, and distribution of information. Generative AI is fundamentally changing how the public seeks, receives, and imparts information and ideas online, raising novel questions about the role and responsibility of the Foundation and Wikimedia volunteer communities in this ecosystem. AI and ML are neither new to Wikimedia projects nor to the Wikimedia volunteers who make these projects possible. Both the Foundation and volunteer communities have developed numerous ML tools to support volunteers in contributing, editing, and curating the ever-growing volume of knowledge across the projects as far back as 2010. Several of these tools have harnessed ML and AI to assist volunteers with frequently recurring tasks such as identifying vandalism or flagging when citations are needed...