Wikipedia’s top 25 most viewed pages in 2023, released, reflect the world’s interest in innovation in artificial intelligence, people who died this year and the growing power of Indian users to influence trends on the website.
Run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia has received more than 84 billion page views so far in 2023, according to data the foundation shared with CNN.
Given its massive surge in popularity, the page about OpenAI’s virtual chatbot ChatGPT was the most viewed page on Wikipedia this year, amassing more than 49.4 million page views. ChatGPT set a record for the fastest-growing user base this past February, amassing 100 million active users in January. Other tech companies have poured billions into developing rival generative AI technology. Related tech companies make semiconductor chips capable of powering future AI innovations and affect geopolitical relationships between the world’s largest superpowers.
“It’s clear that people wanted to better understand the history and the context behind ChatGPT’s technology as they experimented with it,” said Anusha Alikhan, chief communications officer at the Wikimedia Foundation in an interview with CNN.
Alikhan added that ChatGPT is also trained using Wikipedia data, using Wikimedia projects to answer users’ questions or prompts. Wikipedia data and text, which is compiled by human users and editors, play a role in the responses that the chatbot produces to its users.
“Wikipedia plays an essential role in training almost every large language model,” said Alikhan.
She added that because of the foundation’s nonprofit status, they do not charge OpenAi for the use of its content. It’s also the same reason why the company doesn’t have advertisements or track users’ private information.
Joining ChatGPT in the rest of the top five were biographical posts about people who died in 2023, the 2023 Cricket World Cup, the Indian Premier League, which is a Cricket league, and the movie “Oppenheimer.”
India and Southeast Asian audiences made a big impact on 2023’s list, as a fifth of the list consisted of media from that region and the country of India itself.
“Right now we have about 4,700 active English Wikipedia volunteer editors in India,” said Alikhan. “That total puts them behind only the United States and the United Kingdom. India has… a rich media environment and information technology sector.”
Given that India is likely to overtake China as the most populated country in the world, with a population estimated to reach 1.43 billion by the end of the year according to the United Nations, its influence on global media isn’t surprising. China’s government bans Wikipedia from the country’s internet.
According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India and market data analytics firm Kantar, the number of active internet users in India is expected to grow to 900 million from 759 million currently.
The 2023 Cricket World Cup, a sport already popular in India, featured India as a runner-up to the eventual Champion Australia, with top-order batter Virat Kohli winning player of the series. The Wikipedia entry about the series drew more than 38 million page views.
cnn
