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Britannica Didn’t Just Survive. It’s an A.I. Company Now.
- Suppafly 2y ago>Britannica Didn’t Just Survive. It’s an A.I. Company Now. I wouldn't call that surviving. It's like someone reanimating your corpse and pretending it's still you.
- duskwuff 2y agoFortunately, the headline is easy to fix: > Britannica Didn’t Survive. It’s an A.I. Company Now.
- drweevil 2y agolol, yeah. 4 years ago it would have been "It's a Block Chain Company Now".
- dougb5 2y agoBetween britannica.com and Merriam-Webster, their sites get 120 million visits per month, per SimilarWeb. That's not ChatGPT level popularity, but it's way better than mere survival. It might even be more "visits" than their hardcopy books got back in the day. (At least in the case of Britannica, it surely is -- EB only ever sold 7 million copies in its history. [1]). The idea that they're turning into an "AI Company" is just the headline writer's spin on things; I don't think that's how they see themselves at all. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/03/encyclopaedia-britannica-kills-its-print-edition https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/03/encyclopaedi...
- Cpoll 2y agoIf 1 million of those copies went to public or school libraries, it's not impossible to imagine that they were referenced 5 times a day each on average—before the internet became mainstream. That makes 150 million "visits" a month.
- cinntaile 2y agoThat doesn't make any extra money, internet visits are more valuable.
- f1shy 2y agoDo you have any idea what the price of that thing was, back in the days?!
- dougb5 2y agoThere's an order of magnitude fewer libraries than that, but I get your point, and you may be right. It's an interesting "Fermi problem". I wonder how these numbers compare to the dictionary, which is much cheaper but was also much more widely sold. BTW Microsoft Encarta clobbered the print EB a few years before the Web finished the job. EB sales fell by 50% within three years of its release! See "The Reference Wars" for a closer look at this: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%2520Files/Reference%2520Wars%2520-%2520Greenstein_6c4ac193-51eb-4758-a5a6-a4c412261411.pdf https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%2520Files/Reference%2520...
- m463 2y agoR.I.P. Retired In Place
- badgersnake 2y agoThe Deep Space 9 episode with Iggy Pop was on TV yesterday. When the Ferengi accidentally shot the prisoner they were going to exchange with Iggy, they used a set of ‘neural stimulators’ to move their muscles and make them walk zombie-esque to the exchange. This statement makes me think of that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dgeiser13 2y agoThat person didn't die. They are a zombie now.
- downrightmike 2y agoWe're all AI companies now!
- nixpulvis 2y agoWe used to have a set. Sadly I think it got damaged in a flood. Tragic really, some good stuff in there, and an important part of history. I guess maybe I'll leave a copy of Wikipedia lying around somewhere at some point so somebody can stumble upon it and be amused.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agohttps://archive.ph/6RNrP https://archive.ph/6RNrP
- adamrezich 2y ago[flagged]
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoOh great, yet another company that spits out text and crosses its fingers that it's either correct, subtly enough incorrect that the user won't notice, or that the user doesn't even care because they'll copy/paste the output without reading it.
- mmooss 2y agoBritannica has a uniquely high-quality collection of general knowledge. Many of their current articles are written by domain experts, sometimes leading experts. (In the past, people like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud wrote articles for Britannica.) They also own Merriam-Webster, a highly-respected dictionary. I wonder if that content trains their AI and how much difference it makes. Also, is there value in training an AI on a dictionary? It would lead to poor writing style.
- hiddencost 2y agoEvery model is trained in Wiktionary, a larger and higher quality dictionary. Every model is trained on Wikipedia, a larger and higher quality encyclopedia. "Train an AI" is a bit of a red flag, fyi, as a phrase. What is an "AI"? Do you mean "large language model"? Something else?
- mmooss 2y ago> Wiktionary, a larger and higher quality dictionary > Wikipedia, a larger and higher quality encyclopedia. What is the basis for those claims? In my experience with them, both have clearly less accuracy than Merriam-Webster and Britannica, respectively. But that's only anecodotal.
- Cpoll 2y agoDo you have an anecdote? I'm sure you're right and there are Britannica articles that are more accurate than their Wiki counterparts, but it'd be interesting to see an example.
- 1propionyl 2y agoIt would be an interesting use of AI tools to try to flag differences between the two as a means of identifying gaps in coverage or factual mistakes (in either one). And I specifically mean flag. As in, for human review. The last thing Wikipedia needs is spam AI edit submissions (it's probably already happening).
- jterrys 2y agoA while ago I purchased a full set of the Harvard Classics, first edition. I had a blast going through them. Part of me wishes they'd release an updated Encyclopaedia, and I could certainly afford it now compared to when I was a young college grad. But part of me also knows they'd probably just gather dust, to remain ignored even by my children. The paper quality on the later editions were never particularly good, and they never felt quite nice to leaf through.
- peterldowns 2y agoWhere did you find them? I may it may not be working on an ML-powered syntopicon, would love to get a copy of the books in irl paper.
- beardyw 2y agoA printed version of the English Wikipedia, in the style of Britannica would occupy over 3,500 volumes. I think survival in this case is more like clinging on.
- christina97 2y agoI love Wikipedia but I’ve been more and more annoyed at it lately: more spam, more thinly veiled advertising, more political slant. And as always articles turn into a long list of facts and lack a coherent story and writing style. Going back to EB has been very refreshing: high quality, concise, thought out articles. You can actually read them in one shot and it’s enjoyable. Of course EB has its problems and I’m afraid that it’s in that spot where it’s still reaping the benefits of a hundred years of serious investment and prestige but is quickly declining in coverage of more recent changes.
- card_zero 2y agoOnce in a long while I encounter a Wikipedia article that's been edited to promote something (or whitewash somebody), and then I go and root out the edits. It's not an overwhelming problem. I'll agree about writing style, though. It's like one of those collaborative artworks, people adding small pieces everywhere, no composition. Overhauling an article so it reads well is an onerous task.
- kees99 2y agoThis is the way. Thank you. I mean, audience of this site should be better-then-average fit for message of: - Found a problem with crowd-sourced/open-source piece? Don't complain. Make a quality contribution where you can. Otherwise - see if there is a bug report already, maybe submit one if there is none. On wikipedia, that's via "Talk" section.
- clydethefrog 2y agoI have tried doing this as well, but usually the edits get reversed within 48 hours by a power user of Wikipedia. I have given up. You have never encountered this or are you a power user yourself?
- Neonlicht 2y agoThere has never been a time when people didn't have a political, religious or ideological slant. French historians write different articles about the invasion of 1672 than their Dutch colleagues.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- msarrel 2y agoThe one thing that struck me about this article is that there's not even a hint that all companies are now AI companies. Reading this article made it clear that Britannica isn't doing anything different from any other publishing company or any other company for that matter, so it's just a matter of yelling AI over and over again to get attention, and it works.