Social media is a mixed blessing as it pertains to informational content. On the positive side it democratizes access and informational transmission to a much larger number of individuals who can report and discuss information on an individual or tribal level.
This strength is also the weakness of all social media platforms and frankly threatening US democracy. Without being grounded by some incontrovertible facts, , discussion of opinions morph into “alternative facts”- “the scientific data on smoking causing cancer is still up for debate”, “global warming from carbon dioxide emissions has not been conclusively proven”, “the US lunar landing was faked”. Etc. Wikimedia could provide Wkipedia links during a social media discussion upon the request of a participant (example “type Wkimedia’s version of Chatgpt” or “ask Alexa”). The Wkipedia subject links would provide access on to peer-edited information about a topic without Wikimedia offering a declaration of “facts”. Wikipedia should preface the links by explaining how the information is provided and curated. ‘Asking about the origins of Covid virus” would expose social media participants to two points of view and educate them that information is continually being refined toward a common objective of veracity and not to provide “alternative truths”. Wikipedia thus serves as a real time educational tool. A democracy only functions when its populace is educated to accept some factual underpinnings “ozone layer was being destroyed by fluorohydrocarbons” and corrective measures has permitted majorly recovery of the ozone layer. The US political system is entering rocky waters as a semi-democracy (see Economist magazine criteria) and the abilty to call a “WkikChatGPT” by a participant from any platform in the middle of any discussion provides informational grounding that is peer-reviewed and updated. It would desirable when data is refuted (“the January 6 storming of the Capitol was peaceful”) to provide a Wiki moderator (also ChatGPT) query about the facts and assumptions underlying data refutation. Let me know if I can be helpful or why is not a useful endeavor. WikipediaChatGPT will be summoned from outside ant social media platform The AI will need to recognize that many questions are rhetorical and to identify them as such. Let me know how I can be helpful or why this proposal is flawed Thanks Fredric Gorin MD PhD
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