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Jimmy Wales

Published podcast speaker

Claims
40
Episodes
2
Shows
2
Named items
0

Claim ledger

What Jimmy said.

40 transcript-backed records

01 / belief

I think in 10 years, we probably will have a lot more AI supporting tools like I’ve talked about, and probably your search experience would be you can ask a question and get the answer rather than from our body of work.

“I think in 10 years, we probably will have a lot more AI supporting tools like I’ve talked about, and probably your search experience would be you can ask a question and get the answer rather than from our body of work.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

03 / belief

I live in the UK, I live in London, I’ve never seen on the streets the kind of the thing that there’s a lot of reports of people actively angry because someone else is wearing a mask, that sort of thing in public. So because it became very politicized, then clearly if Wikipedia… No, so anyway, if you go to Wikipedia and you research this topic, I think you’ll find more or less what I’ve just said.

“I live in the UK, I live in London, I’ve never seen on the streets the kind of the thing that there’s a lot of reports of people actively angry because someone else is wearing a mask, that sort of thing in public. So because it became very politicized, then clearly if Wikipedia… No, so anyway, if you go to Wikipedia and you research this topic, I think you’ll find more or less what I’ve just said.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

06 / evaluation

Again, it didn’t go viral because it was kind of silly, and if anything would’ve gone viral, it was me responding, but that’s one where it’s like, actually, I’m happy to respond because a lot of people don’t know that I don’t work there and that I don’t make millions, and I’m not a billionaire.

“Again, it didn’t go viral because it was kind of silly, and if anything would’ve gone viral, it was me responding, but that’s one where it’s like, actually, I’m happy to respond because a lot of people don’t know that I don’t work there and that I don’t make millions, and I’m not a billionaire.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

07 / belief

I just want to raise the question.” And then there’s this really interesting conversation that goes on where I think the general consensus was, you know what, this isn’t like the alarming headline racist thing on the front page of Wikipedia, holy moly, that sounds bad.

“I just want to raise the question.” And then there’s this really interesting conversation that goes on where I think the general consensus was, you know what, this isn’t like the alarming headline racist thing on the front page of Wikipedia, holy moly, that sounds bad.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

08 / belief

I mean, one of the things that people are sometimes surprised to hear me say is I actually think Larry Sanger doesn’t get enough credit for his early work in Wikipedia, even though I think co-founder’s not the right title for that.

“I mean, one of the things that people are sometimes surprised to hear me say is I actually think Larry Sanger doesn’t get enough credit for his early work in Wikipedia, even though I think co-founder’s not the right title for that.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

09 / belief

I think there is a Wikipedia entry called something like the moon is made of cheese, where it talks about this is a common sort of joke or thing that children say or that people tell to children or whatever.

“I think there is a Wikipedia entry called something like the moon is made of cheese, where it talks about this is a common sort of joke or thing that children say or that people tell to children or whatever.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

10 / belief

I doubt if the main article Moon, it may mention cheese, probably not even because it’s not credible and it’s not even meant to be serious by anyone, or the article on the Earth certainly won’t have a paragraph that says, well, most scientists think it’s round, but certain people think flat.

“I doubt if the main article Moon, it may mention cheese, probably not even because it’s not credible and it’s not even meant to be serious by anyone, or the article on the Earth certainly won’t have a paragraph that says, well, most scientists think it’s round, but certain people think flat.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

11 / belief

Rather than showing you things we think you’re going to like, we want to show you some things that we think you will disagree with, but which we have some signals that suggest it’s of quality,” I’m like, “Now, that sounds interesting.

“Rather than showing you things we think you’re going to like, we want to show you some things that we think you will disagree with, but which we have some signals that suggest it’s of quality,” I’m like, “Now, that sounds interesting.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

12 / belief

If the people who are saying things that get engagement, if it’s not too awful, but it’s just, maybe it’s not a racist uncle, but maybe it’s an uncle who posts a lot about what an idiot Biden is, which isn’t necessarily an offensive or blockable or bannable thing, and it shouldn’t be, but if that’s the discourse that gets elevated because it gets a rise out of people, then suddenly in a society, it’s like, “Oh, we get more of what we reward,” so I think that’s a piece of what’s gone on.

“If the people who are saying things that get engagement, if it’s not too awful, but it’s just, maybe it’s not a racist uncle, but maybe it’s an uncle who posts a lot about what an idiot Biden is, which isn’t necessarily an offensive or blockable or bannable thing, and it shouldn’t be, but if that’s the discourse that gets elevated because it gets a rise out of people, then suddenly in a society, it’s like, “Oh, we get more of what we reward,” so I think that’s a piece of what’s gone on.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / evaluation

We should launch this as a side project, the idea of here’s a Wiki where we can start playing around.” But actually, we got more work done in two weeks than we had in almost two years because people were able to just jump on and start doing stuff, and it was actually a very exciting time.

“We should launch this as a side project, the idea of here’s a Wiki where we can start playing around.” But actually, we got more work done in two weeks than we had in almost two years because people were able to just jump on and start doing stuff, and it was actually a very exciting time.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

15 / evaluation

Actually, and I’ve said this to Elon about Twitter Blue, which I think wasn’t rolled out well and so forth, but the piece of that that I like is to say, look, actually, if there’s a model where your revenue is coming from people who are willing to pay for the service, even if it’s only part of your revenue, if it’s a substantial part, that does change your broader incentives to say, actually, are people going to be willing to pay for something that’s actually just toxicity in their lives?

“Actually, and I’ve said this to Elon about Twitter Blue, which I think wasn’t rolled out well and so forth, but the piece of that that I like is to say, look, actually, if there’s a model where your revenue is coming from people who are willing to pay for the service, even if it’s only part of your revenue, if it’s a substantial part, that does change your broader incentives to say, actually, are people going to be willing to pay for something that’s actually just toxicity in their lives?”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

16 / prediction

My understanding is it’s improved dramatically and also because the new methods of training don’t necessarily involve identical corpuses to try to match things up, but rather reading and understanding with tokens and large language models, and then reading and understanding, and then you get a much richer … Anyway, apparently it’s quite improved, so I think that now, it is quite possible that these smaller language communities are going to say, “Oh, well finally, I can put something in an English and I can get out Zulu that I feel comfortable sharing with my community because it’s actually good enough, or I can edit it a bit here and there.

“My understanding is it’s improved dramatically and also because the new methods of training don’t necessarily involve identical corpuses to try to match things up, but rather reading and understanding with tokens and large language models, and then reading and understanding, and then you get a much richer … Anyway, apparently it’s quite improved, so I think that now, it is quite possible that these smaller language communities are going to say, “Oh, well finally, I can put something in an English and I can get out Zulu that I feel comfortable sharing with my community because it’s actually good enough, or I can edit it a bit here and there.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

17 / evaluation

No, I agree. But the one thing I’ve said in the past, and this depends on who that person is and what they’re doing, but it’s like I think my credibility, my general credibility in the world should be the equal of a New York Times reporter.

“No, I agree. But the one thing I’ve said in the past, and this depends on who that person is and what they’re doing, but it’s like I think my credibility, my general credibility in the world should be the equal of a New York Times reporter.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / evaluation

His ability to name members of the board, his control of the company is pretty hard to break even if financial results aren’t as good as they could be because he’s taken a step back from the perfect optimization to say, “Actually, for the longterm health in the next 50 years of this organization, we need to reign in some of the things that are working for us in making money because they’re actually giving us a bad reputation.

“His ability to name members of the board, his control of the company is pretty hard to break even if financial results aren’t as good as they could be because he’s taken a step back from the perfect optimization to say, “Actually, for the longterm health in the next 50 years of this organization, we need to reign in some of the things that are working for us in making money because they’re actually giving us a bad reputation.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

19 / prediction

There’s a lot of reasons why it might not be good.” And even back then, I didn’t think as much as I have since about a business model can tend to drive you in a certain place, and really thinking that through in advance is really important because you might say, “Yeah, we’re really, really keen on community control and neutrality,” but if we had an advertising based business model, probably that would begin to erode.

“There’s a lot of reasons why it might not be good.” And even back then, I didn’t think as much as I have since about a business model can tend to drive you in a certain place, and really thinking that through in advance is really important because you might say, “Yeah, we’re really, really keen on community control and neutrality,” but if we had an advertising based business model, probably that would begin to erode.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

21 / evaluation

I like the example, as a parent I would say our entries on early childhood development probably aren’t as good as they should be because a lot of the Wikipedia volunteers… Actually we’re getting older, the Wikipedians, so that demographic has changed a bit.

“I like the example, as a parent I would say our entries on early childhood development probably aren’t as good as they should be because a lot of the Wikipedia volunteers… Actually we’re getting older, the Wikipedians, so that demographic has changed a bit.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

22 / belief

I think if he were given the option to choose to give up one or the other, he would definitely give up being famous because the grief he has gotten in his life around his extravagant wedding and things like that are completely not aligned with the things he’s interested in.

“I think if he were given the option to choose to give up one or the other, he would definitely give up being famous because the grief he has gotten in his life around his extravagant wedding and things like that are completely not aligned with the things he’s interested in.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / belief

At the same time, I think the social processes and the rules and thinking about how do we design them is actually, in the long run, the important part and the hard part because when I look at a situation like what we had today, I say, “Gee, this is all hopeless.

“At the same time, I think the social processes and the rules and thinking about how do we design them is actually, in the long run, the important part and the hard part because when I look at a situation like what we had today, I say, “Gee, this is all hopeless.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

26 / belief

People are friendly. It’s an openness of culture, which I think has served me very well with Wikipedia because I’m basically just friendly to people, and that’s actually very helpful.

“People are friendly. It’s an openness of culture, which I think has served me very well with Wikipedia because I’m basically just friendly to people, and that’s actually very helpful.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

27 / belief

Having said that, I’m not opposed to having standards for schools, and tests are a good way of measuring that. But I think you need to really focus a lot on creativity because if we look forward, the world faces a lot of problems, and we’re going to need a lot of innovation to solve some of these problems.

“Having said that, I’m not opposed to having standards for schools, and tests are a good way of measuring that. But I think you need to really focus a lot on creativity because if we look forward, the world faces a lot of problems, and we’re going to need a lot of innovation to solve some of these problems.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

29 / belief

I live in Notting Hill now. It’s really nice, but if you’re talking about living anywhere in London, I think you have to take a look at the property prices and you’ll say, “This whole place is overrated.

“I live in Notting Hill now. It’s really nice, but if you’re talking about living anywhere in London, I think you have to take a look at the property prices and you’ll say, “This whole place is overrated.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

30 / belief

Certainly, when we think about postmodernism and some of the critiques of the ideas of neutrality and objectivity that come from that end of the world, it’s a deeper philosophical question, I would say.

“Certainly, when we think about postmodernism and some of the critiques of the ideas of neutrality and objectivity that come from that end of the world, it’s a deeper philosophical question, I would say.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

31 / evaluation

First of all, I think privacy is very important, and I think that a lot of internet services need to be much more thoughtful about people’s privacy and really think harder about this.

“First of all, I think privacy is very important, and I think that a lot of internet services need to be much more thoughtful about people’s privacy and really think harder about this.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

32 / evaluation

I think we definitely have organizations that I wouldn’t say you could easily categorize in contemporary terms as either left- or right-wing, I’m thinking in particular of the Catholic Church, which has maintained quite steady certain values and ideas for a very, very long period of time, with minimal shift over time.

“I think we definitely have organizations that I wouldn’t say you could easily categorize in contemporary terms as either left- or right-wing, I’m thinking in particular of the Catholic Church, which has maintained quite steady certain values and ideas for a very, very long period of time, with minimal shift over time.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

33 / evaluation

That’s by far the most effective way to get things done. But we also know there are people who are doing paid editing, and it’s something that we basically disapprove of because we also see the abuses of it, where people go around trying to charge people a lot of money, pretending things that aren’t true about what they can get done, and so on and so forth.

“That’s by far the most effective way to get things done. But we also know there are people who are doing paid editing, and it’s something that we basically disapprove of because we also see the abuses of it, where people go around trying to charge people a lot of money, pretending things that aren’t true about what they can get done, and so on and so forth.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

34 / evaluation

” What I found was this enormously convoluted, very, very Wikipedia discussion about the rules and the process, and there was a deletion a while back because she was not notable when she first announced her candidacy because she was not someone who we could find any information about.

“” What I found was this enormously convoluted, very, very Wikipedia discussion about the rules and the process, and there was a deletion a while back because she was not notable when she first announced her candidacy because she was not someone who we could find any information about.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

36 / evaluation

The one thing about Facebook that I think is really, really interesting is, because of the structure of ownership of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has probably one of the strongest CEO positions of any company.

“The one thing about Facebook that I think is really, really interesting is, because of the structure of ownership of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has probably one of the strongest CEO positions of any company.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

37 / evaluation

Then the content — it’s written largely on the desktop, and therefore there is a divide in a sense between reading and writing, but that probably doesn’t matter so much because I think the reading experience for Wikipedia on mobile is perfectly fine.

“Then the content — it’s written largely on the desktop, and therefore there is a divide in a sense between reading and writing, but that probably doesn’t matter so much because I think the reading experience for Wikipedia on mobile is perfectly fine.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

38 / preference

For me, it’s about how do we think about restoring a sense of decency and thoughtful public engagement where we have an election, and I look at the policies and I say, “I’m going to vote for this person because I agree with that policy.

“For me, it’s about how do we think about restoring a sense of decency and thoughtful public engagement where we have an election, and I look at the policies and I say, “I’m going to vote for this person because I agree with that policy.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

39 / evaluation

Look, if we’re going to have the government intervene in something, we need to be very thoughtful about that because we know very well from economics that many interventions don’t work the way most people think they work, and they actually can cause a lot more harm than good.

“Look, if we’re going to have the government intervene in something, we need to be very thoughtful about that because we know very well from economics that many interventions don’t work the way most people think they work, and they actually can cause a lot more harm than good.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

40 / recommendation

When we think about things at Wikipedia — for example, we could probably increase engagement if we use some of the very basic machine learning techniques to start showing people random promotional links to other things than Wikipedia and then have the machine learn over time how to show you links that are more interesting so that you end up staying on the site longer.

“When we think about things at Wikipedia — for example, we could probably increase engagement if we use some of the very basic machine learning techniques to start showing people random promotional links to other things than Wikipedia and then have the machine learn over time how to show you links that are more interesting so that you end up staying on the site longer.”
Speaker
Jimmy Wales
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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