Jimmy Wales: ‘AI can generate answers. It still can’t earn trust’

The man behind the world’s largest digital encyclopedia talks to Fortune Greece, republished with permission.

There are few digital platforms that have become as quietly indispensable as Wikipedia. With no ads, no subscriptions, and none of the noise that typically accompanies anything “big” on the internet, it has been operating for nearly a quarter of a century as the most stable knowledge infrastructure of the digital world. Behind it stands Jimmy Wales, a founder who seems almost stubbornly resistant to the logic of Silicon Valley.

Today, in an environment where truth is constantly questioned, artificial intelligence is reshaping our relationship with knowledge, and trust in institutions is at historical lows, Jimmy Wales appears almost unconventional. He doesn’t make any reference to disruption, nor does he promise technological “revolutions.” Instead, he insists on something far simpler—and far more difficult: the pursuit of transparency, verification, and group responsibility.

The story of Wikipedia is now well known. What matters more today is not how it began, but how it endured—and what it means to remain relevant in an ecosystem that evolves faster than ever. There is something oddly reassuring about talking to someone whose creation has become so deeply embedded in our daily lives that it’s hard to remember what the world looked like before it. It’s not just the scale of the project. It’s his commitment to principles that sound obvious, but in practice feel almost radical.

At a time when information is becoming increasingly “easy,” Jimmy Wales insists that understanding remains a deeply human process—one of the most hopeful messages not only for the future of Wikipedia, but also for the future of knowledge itself.

Wikipedia has shaped how billions of people access and understand knowledge. Nearly 25 years on, how has it managed to remain sustainable without ads or paywalls?

The model has worked very well from the beginning, and we see no reason to change it. We have incredibly strong support from the public. The average donation to Wikipedia is about $10, we have millions of donors, and many of them give year after year.

This model also brings important advantages. We are not dependent on advertising revenue, nor are we under pressure to chase sensational headlines to drive traffic. That allows us to remain calm and consistent – and that matters.

You’ve argued that tech companies should be paying to train their AI models on Wikipedia’s content. If Wikipedia becomes a core data source for AI, how do you ensure it remains a public good?

One of Wikipedia’s defining features is that all of its content is freely licensed, similar to open-source software. Anyone can use it, modify it, and redistribute it, for commercial or non-commercial purposes, at no cost.

We don’t charge AI companies to use our data, and under our licensing model, we couldn’t. What concerns us is how that data is used. When the use of Wikipedia puts a significant burden on our infrastructure, it needs to be done in a more structured and fair way, through systems we can manage.

It’s not reasonable for our millions of donors, who contribute an average of around $10, to subsidize large technology companies. They are supporting our mission.

That said, things are moving in the right direction. Most major AI companies are beginning to recognize that they need to be fair to Wikipedia. At the same time, our mission is free knowledge for everyone. In that sense, it is a good thing for AI to be trained on Wikipedia data. I wouldn’t want to use an AI trained only on X. It would be a very stupid and angry AI.

Wikipedia was built on a model where users search, read, and evaluate information. Today, AI delivers ready-made answers. Does that concern you, in the sense that it might make people more passive towards information?

I use AI extensively, and in my experience, it actually makes you more active, not more passive. Instead of simply reading a travel article, for example, you can ask questions, go deeper, and explore a topic in more detail. The same applies to programming, which I do as a hobby. I’m not particularly skilled, but AI helps me understand concepts—as long as you use it properly, asking for explanations and following up with more complex questions.

Of course, not everyone will use it that way. It’s a complex picture. But overall, I don’t think AI leads to passive consumption of knowledge.

So, the issue isn’t just the technology, but how we use it. What does human collaboration still do better than AI when it comes to reliable knowledge?

One of the core problems with AI today is what we call........

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