Encyclopedia Britannica is now an artificial intelligence company

Once an icon of the 20th century and considered obsolete in the 21st, the Encyclopædia Britannica is now all about artificial intelligence, and may soon go public with a valuation of nearly $1 billion, according to the British Daily Mail. New York Times.

Until 2012 When printing is finishedThe company’s books served as the world’s oldest continuously published encyclopedias in English, essentially collecting all of the world’s knowledge in one place before the advent of Google or Wikipedia. This has helped Britannica transition into the era of artificial intelligence, where models benefit from access to high-quality, vetted information. More general purpose models like ChatGPT suffer from hallucinations because they have scoured the entire Internet, including all the unwanted and misleading information.

While it still offers an online version of its encyclopedia, as well as the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Britannica’s biggest business today is selling online education software to schools and libraries, software it hopes to enhance with artificial intelligence. This could mean using artificial intelligence to customize learning plans for individual students. The idea is that students will enjoy learning more when software helps them understand gaps in their understanding of a subject and stay with it longer. Another educational technology company, mentallyrecently announced that answers from its chatbot will link to the exact educational materials (i.e. textbooks) you refer to.

CEO of Britannica Jorge Kuz He also said times About the company Britannica AI chatbotwhich allows users to ask questions about its vast database of encyclopedic knowledge compiled over two centuries by vetted academics and editors. The company similarly offers a chatbot for customer service use cases.

Britannica told the Times that it expects revenue to double from two years ago to $100 million.

One educational bookseller that has seen its fortunes go in the opposite direction is Chegg. The company has experienced The stock price falls Almost simultaneously with the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, students canceled their subscriptions to its online knowledge platform.

As with the rise of Wikipedia before it, many people seem to appreciate the ease and accessibility of ChatGPT, even if they know it can’t be completely trusted. Chegg has long had an online Q&A platform for homework help where users can pay to submit questions and get answers. But during the pandemic, it saw a flood of new users, prompting contractors to answer new questions, and they simply couldn’t keep up with ChatGPT. Users have complained that the solutions available on Chegg are often wrong, especially when they are provided by other users and not professionals.

Perhaps Britannica’s prestigious brand and legacy will help it succeed in this new era where chatbots are still vulnerable to returning false information. It seems that schools are at least willing to pay for access to something more reliable.