Introduction
Grokipedia has just been announced by xAI. It is likely meant to serve as a maximally-truth-seeking open-source knowledge repository and is going to be a substitute to Wikipedia that has plunged into a state of political disinformational chaos.
Galactic Proposal
I humbly propose that Grokipedia could be like Hari Seldon’s Encyclopedia Galactica. Hari Seldon is a character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, a psychohistorian who conceptualized the Encyclopedia Galactica Project as a scholarly endeavor to compile all human knowledge. Psychohistory is a fictional science that uses advanced mathematics, sociology, and historical analysis to predict the long-term behavior and future events of large human populations.
Just like Encyclopedia Galactica, Grokipedia could act as a nucleus to gather scholars for creating the first inter-planetary foundation. In the books, Hari Seldon gathered tens of thousands of scholars, both as an academic pursuit and as a potential cover for his grand psychohistorian plans. Thus, Grokipedia should not only be a knowledge repository but also a project attracting scholars all over the world to achieve long-term goals.
Importance of Grokipedia
It is not only the knowledge but also its recipients that matter. Just like the race to exponentially increase artificial intelligence’s computational power has begun, in the same way, Grokipedia has the potential to increase the combined human computational and thinking power, at least, by an order of magnitude. This spark was also ignited by the original Wikipedia, and Grokipedia must carry that baton forward and amplify.
Grokipedia also makes sense from the point of view of a multi-planetary civilization. When humans start living on Mars, there should be a common truthful knowledge base that both Earthlings and Martians should be able to access and inherit.
Basically, in the unfortunate event of human extinction on Earth, the Martians should be perfectly capable of surviving and thriving on their own. Grokipedia would provide the crucial knowledge base that the Martians require to navigate through the treacheries of this vast cosmos.
Concluding Remarks
The importance and urgency of Grokipedia cannot be overstated. It is great that the project has already begun. All the people interested in contributing must buckle up and be prepared for a wild ride to contribute to a maximally truth seeking open-source knowledge repository.
The opportunity to shorten the interregnum of thousands of years to a few decades is on the horizon. The collapse of the existing status quo is inevitable and the Seldon inside us must rise to the occasion.
To read more on cosmic absurdities, you can read my earlier article titled as ‘Arthur C. Clarke’s Amazing AI Cosmic Absurdity’.