At 25, Wikipedia embodies what the internet could have been - but can it survive AI?

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Wikipedia is the world's most popular online encyclopedia.
• It is the most successful open data project of all time.
• However, AI brings new challenges and long-term threats.

Today, when people ask, 'Where was Madonna born?' 'Who won the 1999 Super Bowl?' or 'Who's the current world classical chess champion?' (Bay City, Michigan, the Denver Broncos, and Gukesh Dommaraju), they turn to Wikipedia. Or, to be more exact, if they Google the answer, Wikipedia is the top source, but Google's AI Overview is what they'll see at the search results page. It's Wikipedia writers, however, who did the research for the answers. 

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Twenty-five years ago, it was another story. Before 15 January 2001, if you did a Google ...