Hi Everyone, 

Last year, as part of our annual planning process, the Wikimedia Foundation shared a list of external trends that we believed were likely to significantly impact the context in which the Wikimedia movement operates. Our focus at the time was on the changing nature of search, the astronomical rise in the global demand for content, and rich media content in particular, and the concerning rise of misinformation and disinformation. We heard from many in our movement about additional trends that our movement faces that we didn’t include in that list, but that are critical to how we as a movement operate, including the de-prioritization of investigative journalism, and the damage to GLAM institutions wrought by the global pandemic.  

As part of this year’s annual planning process, we set out to update that list. In particular, we’ve been tracking recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). In our recent Diff post on the topic, [1] we noted some risks as well as some potential opportunities for our movement as this technology continues to evolve. Since there has been a great deal of interest in and discussion about AI products like ChatGPT and what it means for Wikimedia over the past few months (including several threads on the topic on this mailing list), we’d love to explore this topic in more depth with you and continue the conversation about its implications for us as a free knowledge movement. 

I’d like to invite you all to an open call on 23 March at 18:00 UTC (find your local time here) [2] where we can share reflections on the opportunities, risks, and questions we see raised by new AI tools and products. 

The call will be held on Zoom. If you’re interested in joining, email answers@wikimedia.org and we will share the Zoom link with you via email. We will work to coordinate interpretation for languages where there are 3 or more interested community members; please email answers@wikimedia.org with interpretation requests as well.

For those who are unable to join the call, but interested in following and contributing to the conversation, we plan to share notes on our External Trends Meta page [3] afterward so that you can add your thoughts.

Whether in person or on-wiki, I hope you’ll share your ideas so that we can all get a broader understanding of the potential benefits and challenges of this emergent technology. Looking forward to the discussion!

Best, 

Yael Weissburg

1. https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/02/17/looking-outward-external-trends-in-2023/

2.  https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1679594401

3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Draft/External_Trends