I asked my AI about some obsolete card games, and it wrote a 1,000 word essay about Lansquenet. It made up the rules, the strategies, the betting techniques, all of it.

Saying that it was raining on July 14th last year is an error. Inventing an entirely new set of rules is an hallucination.

An AI can’t lie, because it doesn’t know it’s lying. In that sense, it’s sort of pathological, careening forward without a conscience. Humans anthropomorphize things, because it makes it easier for us to process and predict. And AI is tempting us to do that more than we might with an ordinary machine.

That’s probably not the most helpful strategy, and it’s setting us up for real trouble.

AI is a tool, and judgment, for the foreseeable future, remains our job. It doesn’t matter how cool your hammer is, it’s still on you to decide which nails need hammering. And to be responsible for what happens when you use it.

Download: PDF | EPUB | MP3 | WATCH VIDEO

A good way to think about human history is that it has two distinct scales. On the small scale we have the churn of daily events — the stuff of endless individual exploits. And on the large scale, we have the long-term evolution of human societies — a scale so sweeping that the actions of individuals are as insignificant as the shifting grains of desert sand. The task of social science is to somehow connect these two scales — to show how the characters of history act on a stage that they do not fully control.

Looking at the present political spectacle, it’s clear that the world order is changing. In a matter of months, Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the US-led regime that reigned since the end World War II. But here is an interesting question: if Trump had not been re-elected, to what extent would things be different?

The answer depends on our choice of scale. In a world without Trump, the eddies of small-scale history would surely be altered. There would be no ‘department of government efficiency’, for example. Nor would their likely be an unfolding US-led trade war. But on the scale of long-term history, many tides would remain the same. Chief among them would be the inexorable decline of US empire. To put things bluntly, the ‘American century’ is over and will never return.

The half life of an empire

Thinking about the rise and fall of imperial power, let’s talk about lifespan. Unlike human lives, which have a distinct beginning and end, the lifespan of empires is more fluid. Empires are not ‘born’ so much as they emerge. And they do not ‘die’ so much as they fade into obscurity. This continuity makes it difficult to put exact dates on imperial tombstones. Still, if we take a cue from nuclear physics, we can quantify the imperial ‘lifespan’.

When studying radioactive elements, physicists quantify an isotope’s longevity in terms of its ‘half life’ — the period required for half of the substance to decay. Like radioactive matter, empires also have a half life, which we can define as the period spent above the halfway point to and from peak dominance. Figure 1 illustrates the concept. The half life represents a simple way to quantify the lifespan of imperial power.

To measure the imperial half life, the main question is how we should quantify ‘dominance’. I suggest we use the empire’s share of world energy consumption. The idea is that when it comes to empire, there is nothing more important than the exploitation of energy. The flow of energy is what makes biological life possible, and it is the lifeblood of all human societies, including those that choose the path to globe-spanning power.

The half life of the British Empire

Although human history has seen countless empires rise and fall, reliable energy data only appears in the last few centuries. At that point, empire building was largely a European game, played best by the British. At its high point in the late 19th century, the British Empire spanned about a quarter of the globe.

The goal of this imperial project, of course, was to enrich the British population by centralizing resources to the British isles. Figure 2 shows how this project played out in terms of energy consumption. From 1750 to 1900, Britain’s share of world energy use rose tenfold. And from 1900 to 2025, Britain’s share of world energy use shrank tenfold. In short, the British Empire faded as surely as it emerged.

Turning to our measure of imperial lifespan, the half life of the British Empire (indicated by the shaded region in Figure 2) spanned just over a century, from 1850 to 1952. Britons who lived and died during this period would have known only imperial dominance. And yet when placed on the grand scale of human history, the British Empire was fleeting. It reigned supreme for little more than a single human lifetime.

The half life of the US empire

As the British Empire began to fade, the US empire was on the rise. From 1800 to 1945, the US share of world energy consumption grew nearly twentyfold. When American power peaked at the end of World War II, the United States consumed slightly more than a third of the world’s energy. Figure 3 plots this inexorable ascent.

In hindsight, the pinnacle of US power was brief. As post-war Europe was rebuilt and industrialization spread to all corners of the planet, US energy dominance waned for the remainder of the 20th century. Today, the US empire is well past its prime.

Turning to the US imperial half life, it lasted for about 120 years, from 1889 to 2008. As such, virtually every US politician who is now in power was born and raised during the period of US dominance — an era when America was ‘exceptional’. But that era has now passed; the ‘American century’ is dead. Hence the widespread confusion among US elites, who still think in terms of US supremacy, but cannot fathom that America’s halcyon days are gone and will never return.

The rhyme in imperial history

A defining feature of imperial regimes is that they think of themselves as exceptional. And of course, when in their prime, dominant empires are exceptional — they are mammoths among mice. Still, when we compare mammoths to mammoths, the exceptionality disappears and we see that imperial history has a curious rhyme.

For example, Figure 4 shows what happens when we plot the rise and fall of the British and US empires on the same scale. Their history, it seems, has a similar rhythm. Both empires rose and fell over the course of two centuries. And both empires had a period of dominance (a ‘half life’) that lasted roughly a century.

In my mind, this rhyme in imperial history demonstrates the limits of political agency. When it comes to the rise and fall of empires, individual politicians are basically powerless to alter the long arm of history. Empires shrink as surely as they expand, leaving post-peak rulers (especially those who long for ‘greatness’) pushing on rope. Their bloviation changes nothing about the long-term imperial descent.

A new hegemon

By definition, the full pulse of imperial power is visible only in hindsight, once the pinnacle of dominance is a distant memory. As such, we can say little about the imperial future, other than that the next century will likely be dominated by China. Indeed, the era of Chinese supremacy has already begun.

It happened with little fanfare in 2009. (See Figure 5.) In that year, China’s share of world energy consumption first surpassed that of the US. Intriguingly, it was also in 2009 that the US exited its imperial half life, consuming (for the first time since 1889) less than half its peak share of world energy use. Since then, the tide of US power has continued to ebb, undeterred by the minutia of partisan politics. And the tide of Chinese power has continued to rise. Within a few years, China will consume double the energy of the United States.

It’s surely for this reason that China has responded to US tariffs with a nonchalant shrug. China holds all the cards, and Beijing leaders know it. In Washington, American elites still strut like Roman generals. But to the rest of the world, they look increasingly like senile peacocks.

Support this blog

Hi folks. I’m a crowdfunded scientist who shares all of his (painstaking) research for free. If you think my work has value, consider becoming a supporter.

Stay updated

Sign up to get email updates from this blog.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. You can use/share it anyway you want, provided you attribute it to me (Blair Fix) and link to Economics from the Top Down.

Sources and methods

World energy consumption

Data for world energy consumption is from the following sources:

• 1800 to present: Our World in Data, Energy Production and Consumption
• Prior to 1800: data is from Ian Morris’ book The Measure of Civilization, Table 3.1 & 3.4. Morris reports data for energy use per capita in the East and West. Using population data from Angus Maddison, I use Morris’ data to estimate world energy use. I then splice this data to the OWD data in 1800.

Britain energy use

Data is from the following sources:

• 1965 to present: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy
• prior to 1965: data is from Paul Warde, Energy consumption in England and Wales, 1560-2000

US energy use

Data is from the following sources:

• 1949 to present: Energy Information Agency, Table 1.3, Primary energy consumption estimates by source
• prior to 1949: Appendix E1 in the EIA 2009 Annual Energy Review (available here)

China energy use

Data is from the following sources:

• 1965 to present: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy
• prior to 1965: I use Morris’ estimates for per capita energy consumption in the East, coupled with Angus Maddison’s estimates of China’s population

Further reading

Morris, I. (2013). The measure of civilization: How social development decides the fate of nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Smil, V. (2018). Energy and civilization: A history. MIT press.

Warde, P. (2007). Energy consumption in England & Wales, 1560-2000. Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche, Istituto di studi sulle societa del Mediterraneo.

The post The Half Life of Empire appeared first on Economics from the Top Down.

Today's links

• Republicans want to force students to pay off scam college loans: Incredibly, they've found a way to make student debt WORSE.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2024
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Republicans want to force students to pay off scam college loans (permalink)

House Republicans have a great plan to pay for Trump's tax-cuts for the rich: jacking up the cost of federal student loans, while eliminating protections for students who are scammed by fake universities:

https://prospect.org/education/2025-04-30-republicans-education-upper-class-privilege-student-loans/

Every GOP legislator and especially Congressional committee chairs are scrambling to find cuts that can offset Trump's plans to make his 2017 tax cuts permanent and then add more cuts on top of that. The failure of Doge to make any appreciable savings has left Trump high and dry, with unfunded tax cuts that will flunk even the most compliant, ass-kissing Congressional Budget Office analysis:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-doge-savings-trump-rcna203051

Enter the House Education and Workforce Committee, whose Republican members have found a way to save $330b over the next decade, through the simple expedient of making working families choose between foregoing education for their kids, or burdening those kids with the brutal, crushing debts for the rest of their lives – debts that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, even if the student becomes totally, permanently disabled – not even if the "university" that charged them all that tuition is later shut down for running a scam.

Trump knows a lot about scams in higher ed, of course. His own ill-fated "Trump 'University,'" a fraudulent, non-accredited institution that stole millions of dollars from unsuspecting students:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_University

Trump U isn't the only scam college out there, not by a damn sight. The Department of Education's "Borrower Defense to Repayment" system allows students who've been scammed by fraudulent institutions to have their debts canceled. That's the clause that the GOP members of the House Education and Workforce Committee plan to kill. This will not only leave fraud victims on the hook for a lifetime of debt – it will also make it easier for scam institutions to re-open and prey upon even more students. The Republicans' giveaway to scam universities kills the "gainful employment" rule that requires that universities prove that their grads can actually get work in the fields they graduate in.

The GOP plan will kill all subsidized undergrad loans, meaning that interest will be piled on student loans while students are still at school, so a grad with a four-year degree will also owe four years worth of compounded interest on their freshman year loans. Undergrad loans are capped at $50k, less than half the price of a degree at most state colleges. The GOP members say that the $50k cap covers the "median tuition" – meaning that it is lower than tuition at half the country's institutions.

GOP members have also called for changes to "income based repayment," with sharply rising payments that will shoot up every time a graduate's income crosses a line. Under this plan, a student grad $10k-$20k would have to pay 1% of their income to service their loans. For each $10k increase in graduate pay, repayment goes up by 1% – so if a grad earning $95k gets a raise to $100k, their repayments will shoot up from 9% of their annual income to 10%. That means a $5,000 raise could leave a graduate $5,000 poorer.

This proposal will roll back Biden-era changes to the interest charged to borrowers on income-based repayment. Under the new rules, interest will continue to compound on your loan even if you're earning peanuts, meaning that the poorest grads will have the highest lifetime interest charges and likely die with unpaid student loans that exceed the principle several times over (remember, the only debt that can be charged against your Social Security is student loans).

The Republican proposal also screws grads working through a Public Service Loan Forgiveness plan, which cancels your student debt after ten years of work in public service. The Republicans want to increase the payments due from grads during that decade of public service. Also, med-school grads would no longer receive credit towards PSLF debt cancellation for the years they spend in residencies, which will drain the supply of freshly minted doctors who staff community health clinics.

They also want to gut Pell grants, changing eligibility to limits grants to "full time" students (30+ hours/week of courses), which will strike hardest at the poorest students, who often attend school part time while working.

Raising the price of a good education and lowering protections against receiving a bad education is an attack on the very idea of education as a source of social mobility. After all, the students most likely to be trapped by a scam college are students from families without a lot of college grads, who lack the means of assessing educational quality.

During the New Deal, America created two parallel paths to social mobility: labor protections and subsidized home ownership. As with every American social initiative, the New Deal was undermined by racism, sexism and xenophobia, and excluded many of America's most disfavored minorities from its benefits. After WWII, two groups of Americans fought the change the New Deal. The wealthy fought to roll back its protections, while the rest of us fought to extend those benefits to Black people, indigenous people, Latino people, women, queers, and others who were left out from the start:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

They made a lot of progress, but then came the Reagan revolution, which wiped out labor protections (including defined benefits pensions) and doubled down on home ownership as the only means of securing a comfortable and dignified life. Over the next quarter-century, this turned a lucky group of workers into real-estate millionaires, even as their wages stagnated and the cost of education and health care skyrocketed:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Housing prices also skyrocketed. Of course they did: they only way that owning a house could be an "investment" (as opposed to way to fulfill the human need for shelter) is if the price of keeping a roof over your head went up. But owning an expensive house in a world of stagnant wages and rising health and education costs is a recipe for not owning a house anymore, because you'll have to liquidate that home to cover your bills or get your kids through school. This century hasn't just been a time in which housing grew more valuable (and thus more expensive) – it's been an era in which its easier than ever to be forced out of your home:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Trading labor protection for real-estate speculation was always going to end badly for workers. The retreat of organized labor has paved the way for a rollback of all the post-war prosperity, allowing America's oligarchs to create a new Gilded Age where education is reserved for failsons of wealthy families, which is fine, because the rest of us won't need a degree to shine their shoes, clean their toilets, and screw the little screws in on iPhones:

https://www.theverge.com/news/644320/us-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-says-well-be-making-iphones-in-the-us

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Car Subscription Features Raise Your Risk of Government Surveillance, Police Records Show https://www.wired.com/story/police-records-car-subscription-features-surveillance/

• Who Pays the Price When Cochlear Implants Go Obsolete? https://www.sapiens.org/culture/planned-obsolescence-cochlear-implants/

• The Tech Companies Fighting To Sell Your Data https://www.levernews.com/the-tech-companies-fighting-to-sell-your-data/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Danny O’Brien goes to work at EFF! https://web.archive.org/web/20050507123924/https://www.oblomovka.com/entries/2005/04/29#1114782180

#15yrsago 1939 World’s Fair: the future’s cradle, in pictures https://web.archive.org/web/20100501170616/http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/04/gallery-1939-worlds-fair/

#10yrsago British austerity: a failed experiment abandoned by the rest of the world https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

#10yrsago Translation: once they learn the truth, techies hate and fear us https://www.wired.com/2015/04/us-defense-secretary-snowden-caused-tensions-techies/

#10yrsago FBI’s crypto backdoor plans require them to win the war on general purpose computing http://webpolicy.org/2015/04/28/you-cant-backdoor-a-platform/

#10yrsago Anyone can open a Master Lock padlock in under two minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09UgmwtL12c

#10yrsago Couples counsellor who assigns Ikea furniture assembly calls Liatorp “The Divorcemaker” https://web.archive.org/web/20150430183654/https://laist.com/2015/04/28/santa_monica_therapist_uses_ikea_as.php

#10yrsago UK Tories forged letter of support in the Telegraph from “5,000 small businesses” https://sturdyblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/small-business-letter-to-the-telegraph-an-attempt-to-defraud-the-electorate/

#5yrsago How monopolism crashed the US food supply https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#butchery

#5yrsago Legendary troubleshooting stories https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#cuckoos-egg

#5yrsago Medical debt collection during the pandemic https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#armbreakers

#5yrsago British Library releases 1.9m images https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#it-belongs-in-a-museum

#5yrsago NSO Group employee used Pegasus cyberweapon to stalk a woman https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#loveint

#5yrsago Founder of AI surveillance company was a Nazi who helped shoot up a synagogue https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#damien-patton-nazi

#5yrsago Talking Radicalized with the CBC https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#zuckervegans

#5yrsago Bayesian reasoning and covid-19 https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#uncertainty

#5yrsago Cigna claims to be rolling in dough and on the verge of bankruptcy https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/29/banjo-nazis/#someones-lying

#1yrago Cigna's nopeinator https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Auckland: Unity Books, May 2, 6PM
  https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1320740102199

• Wellingon: Unity Books, May 3, 3PM
  https://www.unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-events/author-talk-picks-and-shovels-by-cory-doctorow

• Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15
  https://whitewhalebookstore.com/events/20250515

• Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
  https://us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/

• Virtual: Writing to Resist (California Writers Club Berkeley):
  https://cwc-berkeley.org/writing-to-resist-5-18-25/

• PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• PDX: Picks and Shovels with bunnie Huang at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
  https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0

• London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
  https://howtoacademy.com/events/cory-doctorow-the-fight-against-the-big-tech-oligarchy/

• Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell's Bookshop, Jul 2
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1308451968059

• Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 3
  https://www.uk.coop/events-and-training/events-calendar/co-op-congress-2025-book-your-place

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Cloudfest)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ai-fC-2Bpo

• Move Fast and Break Kings
  https://flipboard.video/w/2aH2AFNTPjcdWCMqjPB5N3?start=2s

• Beyond the Web (Ostrom Workshop)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WfO-9G4EgQ

Latest books (permalink)

• • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Nimby and the D-Hoppers CONCLUSION https://craphound.com/stories/2025/04/13/nimby-and-the-d-hoppers-conclusion/

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Not too long ago, we were asked when we’re going to replace Wikipedia’s human-curated knowledge with AI. 

The answer? We’re not. 

———

The community of volunteers behind Wikipedia is the most important and unique element of Wikipedia’s success. For nearly 25 years, Wikipedia editors have researched, deliberated, discussed, built consensus, and collaboratively written the largest encyclopedia humankind has ever seen. Their care and commitment to reliable encyclopedic knowledge is something AI cannot replace. 

That is why our new AI strategy doubles down on the volunteers behind Wikipedia.

We will use AI to build features that remove technical barriers to allow the humans at the core of Wikipedia to spend their valuable time on what they want to accomplish, and not on how to technically achieve it. Our investments will be focused on specific areas where generative AI excels, all in the service of creating unique opportunities that will boost Wikipedia’s volunteers: 

• Supporting Wikipedia’s moderators and patrollers with AI-assisted workflows that automate tedious tasks in support of knowledge integrity; 
• Giving Wikipedia’s editors time back by improving the discoverability of information on Wikipedia to leave more time for human deliberation, judgment, and consensus building; 
• Helping editors share local perspectives or context by automating the translation and adaptation of common topics;
• Scaling the onboarding of new Wikipedia volunteers with guided mentorship. 

We believe that our future work with AI will be successful not only because of what we do, but how we do it. Our efforts will use our long-held values, principles, and policies (like privacy and human rights) as a compass: we will take a human-centered approach and will prioritize human agency; we will prioritize using open-source or open-weight AI; we will prioritize transparency; and we will take a nuanced approach to multilinguality, a fundamental part of Wikipedia.

Providing freely accessible knowledge to anyone on the planet is Wikipedia’s mission, one that has only grown in importance since the rise of generative AI. Its success is why Wikipedia is at the core of every AI training model. With this new AI strategy, we are making a promise and a commitment to the world we serve and the volunteers who have made—continue to make—Wikipedia the largest encyclopedia that humanity has ever known.

You can read the Wikimedia Foundation’s new AI strategy over on Meta-Wiki.

Chris Albon is the Director of Machine Learning at the Wikimedia Foundation. You can follow him at @chrisalbon. Leila Zia is the Head of Research at the Wikimedia Foundation.