The BaseEssayWired
Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong
Wired excerpts Richard Cooke's book on Wikipedia's history. Cooke reports a ban on writing with large language models by March 2026 and a loss of almost a quarter of readers since 2022, and argues AI is one force in a longer decline of the encyclopedic age. It suggests Wikipedia's lasting value may be its process, not its contents.
Why it matters
The same thing, for different readers.
What it means for you
The excerpt reports Wikipedia lost almost a quarter of its readers since 2022, presumably to AI summaries, and says those answers are often wrong.
For researchers
Cites a Princeton study finding about 5 percent of nearly 3,000 new English Wikipedia articles from August 2024 contained substantial AI-generated content; the excerpt does not name the paper.
The question it raises
Asks what good Wikipedia has done and what is lost if machines take its place, suggesting its lasting value may lie in its process, not its contents.
In their own words
Every quotation was found, word for word, in the text we saved from the source. That shows the words are there; it does not make them true, or prove the speaker meant them as quoted.
From the source’s own text.
“By March 2026, AI content was found to violate its core principles so often that writing with large language models was banned outright, and their role restricted to translation and minor proofreading.”
“Since 2022, the encyclopedia had lost almost a quarter of its readership, more than 1.1 billion visits per month, a missing audience who, presumably, were seeking out AI summaries instead.”
“What we’re witnessing is something more profound: a generational shift in how people relate to knowledge itself. Younger users don’t search. They scroll. They don’t read articles. They consume fragments. The encyclopedia form factor, our twenty-year bet, may be losing relevance faster than any single technology can explain. AI is an accelerant, not the fire.”
“When the Wikimedia Foundation says that the care and commitment of Wikipedians to “reliable encyclopedic knowledge is something AI cannot replace,” that is not the same as saying that it will not be replaced.”
“Anyone who uses AI agents knows that they give plausible, almost intuitive answers, which can pass a superficial review of their sourcing. They are also often wrong. If Wikipedia itself becomes corrupted by artificial intelligence, by what means will we prove when they are wrong?”
The record
- Questions
- How is AI changing childhood, health and daily life? · What values should AI have, and could it have a mind of its own?
- People
- Richard Cooke (Wrote it, author, The Last Best Place on the Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia) · Christophe Henner (Speaks, long-time Wikipedian) · Katherine Maher (Mentioned, head of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2019) · Dariusz Jemielniak (Mentioned) · Jimmy Wales (Mentioned, cofounder, Wikipedia) · Larry Sanger (Mentioned, cofounder, Wikipedia)
- What we read
- We read the whole source.
- Found by
- The Radar, run of October 14, 2026, via
wired-ai(tier 2: a major outlet’s own reporting) - Cite this
- Wired, “Wikipedians Believed AI Would Come and Go. They Were Wrong”, October 13, 2026. Entry in the Ctrl AI Base, https://ctrlai.com/base/wired-2026-10-13-wikipedia-ai-overviews-decline