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You may think that after years of campaigning to reform Wikipedia, co-founder Larry Sanger would be all-in on Elon Musk's rival Grokipedia. But so far, he's not impressed.
"My first impression of it is that these are long, meaty articles that you can learn a lot from," Sanger tells us in a phone interview. "Unfortunately, not everything that one can learn from Grokipedia is true. Of course, that's also true of Wikipedia sometimes. But Grokipedia, being generated by a [large language model], it does have the usual LLM bullshittery."
Sanger points to his own page on Grokipedia, which he says made up the rationale for him becoming agnostic after growing up in a conservative branch of the Lutheran Church. "His father's scientific profession likely contributed to this shift toward scientific rationalism and skepticism," Grokipedia says.
Sanger's father was a seabird biologist, but also served as a church elder. Grokipedia's analysis is "not terribly far from the mark, but it's, A, speculative, and B, nobody has ever said that. I've never said that," Sanger says. "But it's possible that I'm not remembering and I can't remember everything that I say in interviews."
Sanger's Grokipedia page also says he resigned from Wikipedia in 2002, just one year after it was founded, due to "unsustainable funding, dilution of editorial standards, and failure to maintain neutrality." But Sanger tells us he was laid off after Wikipedia failed to secure funding for his role. (Not "ousted" by fellow co-founder Jimmy Wales, as The Washington Post put it.)
Sanger's Wikipedia entry, meanwhile, states he was laid off and resigned, though that's probably because he stayed on as a "part-time volunteer" for Wikipedia and the site's predecessor, Nupedia, until March 2002, when financial considerations forced him to look for full-time work.
His Wikipedia entry contends that Sanger had "asked to be given more respect and deference by Wikipedians, which backfired and led to an increase in friction between him and the community."
"That is completely wrong," Sanger tells PCMag. "That is a narrative that would have been told by...a relatively small number of bad actors in the community at the time. What I asked is, there are certain things that the community as a whole needs to get behind certain rules, and if people openly defy the rules, then, well, there has to be consequences."
He added: "I haven't read my Wikipedia article in a number of years and might have to weigh in."
'I Do Not Want Wikipedia To Be More Conservative'
So, who is Larry Sanger, and how did he go from co-founding one of the most well-known websites in the world to becoming one of its most outspoken critics?
One thing he is not doing is campaigning for a more conservative version of Wikipedia. That might not be obvious given the right's interest in his message, marked by an appearance on the Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones shows and coverage in outlets like Breitbart.
"The contribution that I am hoping to make has very little to do with politics," Sanger says. "I do not want Wikipedia to be more conservative. My concern has always been, quite sincerely, neutrality."
He's also not in cahoots with Elon Musk, who called Wikipedia "Wokepedia" last year, and announced Grokipedia one day after Sanger debuted his proposal to reform the online encyclopedia. Sanger calls his approach the Nine Theses on Wikipedia, named after Martin Luther's 95 theses, the unveiling of which kicked off the Protestant Reformation in 1517. (He holds a PhD in philosophy from Ohio State University.)
Sanger has not spoken to Musk about Grokipedia, nor did he know he would announce it on that day. (He suspects Musk picked it to build off the media coverage of his Nine Theses.) When Sanger encouraged Wikipedia to "get its house in order" after Grokipedia's launch, Musk responded: "He should calm down, this is day three of the v0.1 launch," perhaps misunderstanding that Sanger was directing his comment at Wikipedia, not Grokipedia.
Sanger says he began his months-long effort to develop his Nine Theses because he felt "personally responsible" to help those who tell him their Wikipedia pages are riddled with inaccuracies, damaging their reputations. "It happens over and over again, and Wikipedia isn't doing anything about it," Sanger says.
It remains to be seen if Grokipedia can master the art of getting things right on the internet. From what Sanger has seen so far, the first version of it is not better than Wikipedia, but it has promise. Its articles are "decent," though they also contain biases on both sides of the political aisle. It's not always a good writer; at its worst, it veers into "vague word salads," as he writes in his first reactions blog. (The creationism page's opening paragraph is a good example of this, while Wikipedia's version is more straight forward.)
"[Grokipedia's] style is very much LLM-ese. We all recognize it now: It’s readable enough, but often insipid pablum," he writes.
'The Devil Is in the Details'
Sanger is intrigued by Grokipedia's creative approaches, such as letting the public flag inaccuracies and suggest edits for an AI to make. "That has never happened before. That's news," he says. "But we don't know how it's going to work. The devil is in the details."
Whether the public can be trusted to make the edits remains to be seen, and Sanger hopes the AI wouldn't be "easily convinced" by poor suggestions. With enough funding and motivation, however, Musk could eventually outdo Wikipedia with AI and automation, Sanger says.
A spokesperson from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that oversees Wikipedia, told us that the site's "knowledge is—and always will be—human." However, during a podcast appearance last week, Jimmy Wales expressed openness to incorporating AI.
"When I heard about this proposal to put AI summaries at the top of articles, I thought, 'Well, that sounds like a terrible idea,'" Wales said. "But actually, where I think it's interesting is, are there things that aren't that fun or interesting for humans to do that we could get a little support?"
Wikipedia began testing AI-generated summaries for mobile in June. However, the Wikimedia Foundation paused the trial on the second day after backlash from editors. More recently, the foundation said that between March and August of this year, the number of Wikipedia page views coming from real humans declined by 8% year-on-year.
Like Sanger, Wales is also hitting the media circuit to discuss his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last. When asked by the New York Times about Sanger's push to abolish source blacklists, Wales said "Wikipedia should always stand ready to accept criticism and change," but cautioned against "pandering to this raging mob of the moment [and maintain] our values, maintaining our trustworthiness."
Sanger says he's not at odds with Wales. "I forgive him for things that he used to say about me." He didn't elaborate, but in 2007, The Tampa Bay Times wrote about how Wales questioned Sanger's co-founder status, insisting he was a more minor employee.
What's next? Sanger says he sees Wales "as a potential ally in the push" to reform Wikipedia.
"I want people who are disaffected with Wikipedia to take a few months to put aside whatever distaste you may have for it, descend on it, and see if we can come together and [improve] what is supposed to be a public project," Sanger says. "Unless there are some people who are willing to dust off their old accounts, or in some cases make new accounts and get involved, then my fear is nothing is going to change."
Still, Sanger says he "will not cry if Wikipedia goes the way of the dodo. Let the best project win."