Jimmy Wales

The software is called Wiki.

And a wiki is just a website anybody can edit.

It comes from a Hawaiian word, wiki wiki, which means quick.

So the idea is quick collaboration.

Oh yeah, I mean the volunteer community is absolutely everything.

They write all the content, they make all the editorial decisions, they do the community management and things like that.

We think there's some interesting opportunities for our community to use AI to help us with the work.

It's not good enough to write Wikipedia entries, but it is good enough to, say, spot a problem or to make a suggestion.

What does the next 25 years hold?

I mean, I do worry a lot about the rise of censorship around the world and the various ways that governments, both totalitarian governments, but also even democratic governments, are starting to...

I think, soften on their understanding of freedom of expression and so forth.

So I worry, you know, a fair amount about that sort of thing.

I always am thinking about the community and thinking, how do we stay healthy?

How do we stay strong?

Yeah, so I've been watching the growth of free software, open source software, as most people call it.

And I saw programmers coming together to collaborate in new ways, you know, sharing their code and so forth, using free licensing.

And I thought, ah, well, that's interesting.

That kind of collaboration could extend beyond just software to all kinds of cultural works.

And then I had the idea for an encyclopedia, got very excited and started Newpedia, the predecessor, and plugged away that for two years.

That was not successful.