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I have distinct memories from 20 years ago of high school teachers and college professors railing against the use of Wikipedia in research papers.
Their logic, which wasn’t without merit, was that anyone could write anything they want on Wikipedia pages, so none of it was factual enough to be used in a scholarly work.
Fast forward 20 years, and I feel like a large number of people are taking the answers coming out of AI chatbots as entirely factual and accurate. Citing something off Wikipedia in even casual conversation was considered lame. Now, people accept the Google Gemini answer at the top of a search as completely accurate.
Where did our skepticism go?
A Generational Understanding
My educational experience happened during one of the biggest transitional periods in history. The generation before me didn’t have constant access to the internet and its collection of information. The generations after me has only ever known that.
As a high school student, the internet augmented my education, by the time I graduated college, it was fully ingrained as an invaluable resource.
I was also largely taught by individuals who weren’t on the cutting edge of technology. They feared what they didn’t…