I’ve been an editor on Wikipedia for decades now. I’ve followed sources to clarify information, fix broken links, and remove inaccurate information. I know how it works.
It’s always worth a double check.
That’s exactly my point. Wikipedia is transparent about where it gets its information. You can double-check citations, and if the citations don’t exist or don’t support a relevant claim, you can discard them (or edit them to flag that fact, or go above and beyond to provide a new source, if you’re so willing.) With AI summaries, you can’t do any of that. You’re given a summation without automatic citations (or sometimes, with bogus made-up ones), and you can’t do anything to correct any misinformation you encounter. Maybe you can report it, but you can’t do anything in real time to prevent others from finding that same inaccurate information - not in the way that you can to immediately correct an inaccuracy on Wikipedia.
For something like perplexity under brave where you’re given inline citations, yeah, go follow them and get to an authoritative source faster.
We didn’t start with “I can’t submit an updated review if I find mistakes”, we started at “there’s another unnecessary layer of indirection”. Which, sure, but it’s hardly different than getting a start with a medium article of “best xxx of 2025” or, yes, a wikipedia page. It may not be to your taste, but I’ve had some occasions where it’s convenient.
I’ve been an editor on Wikipedia for decades now. I’ve followed sources to clarify information, fix broken links, and remove inaccurate information. I know how it works.
That’s exactly my point. Wikipedia is transparent about where it gets its information. You can double-check citations, and if the citations don’t exist or don’t support a relevant claim, you can discard them (or edit them to flag that fact, or go above and beyond to provide a new source, if you’re so willing.) With AI summaries, you can’t do any of that. You’re given a summation without automatic citations (or sometimes, with bogus made-up ones), and you can’t do anything to correct any misinformation you encounter. Maybe you can report it, but you can’t do anything in real time to prevent others from finding that same inaccurate information - not in the way that you can to immediately correct an inaccuracy on Wikipedia.
Same. But now this is a different topic.
For something like perplexity under brave where you’re given inline citations, yeah, go follow them and get to an authoritative source faster.
We didn’t start with “I can’t submit an updated review if I find mistakes”, we started at “there’s another unnecessary layer of indirection”. Which, sure, but it’s hardly different than getting a start with a medium article of “best xxx of 2025” or, yes, a wikipedia page. It may not be to your taste, but I’ve had some occasions where it’s convenient.