Wikipedia has become over the years one of the most used sources of information in the world. More than 6,458 million entries in English, more than 1,755 million in Spanish, and equally monstrous figures in other languages ​​are the work of an army of tens of thousands of contributors who altruistically choose to contribute to encyclopedias of all kinds. that practically ended encyclopedias.

The problem, and this is a recurring theme, is that Not everyone edits Wikipedia with good intentions. From the prankster who decides to introduce false or humorous elements “for laughs” to cases as gory as Zhemao, we are reminded from time to time that we should not take all information reflected on Wikipedia as reliable. Rather, we should be cautious and check whenever possible the references contained in articles and look for alternative sources of information when we read a “Citation Required” indicator.

The problem is that many users use Wikipedia as their only source, and in each case they check for links that point to the original sources, but they don’t open and check them. This over time led to the emergence of links are added to supposed sources that do not actually confirm the information given on Wikipedia. Why? Because whoever does it knows that the vast majority of users will never get to the review.

Meta is aware of this problem and wants to help the Wikimedia Foundation, which is responsible for Wikipedia, solve it with a solution that at least initially seems like a good idea. As we can read in Digital Trends, Meta wants to design an AI that checks Wikipedia article citations. A very difficult challenge, yes, as the AI ​​must be able to understand both the text “supported” by the link and the link itself to confirm that there is indeed a relationship between the two.

Even more interesting, although also more complex and more distant in time, we find two other points in the proposal: the possibility that AI to find better references that those cited in articles and add to them, and that in addition to using texts as sources, they can also be based on multimedia files. For this purpose, of course, you should be able to analyze them and draw conclusions about their content.

If this system works well, Wikipedia could finally have a system for revising, correcting, and expanding links, which would substantially improve the reliability of its records. If Meta succeeds in completing this system and its operation is adequate, he will be rewarded dot that could add a few whole numbers to your picture.