Encyclopedia Britannica is now an AI company

Once an icon of the 20th century, considered obsolete in the 21st, the Encyclopedia Britannica, now known simply as Britannica, is entirely on artificial intelligence and could soon be published at a valuation of nearly $1 billion, according to data. New York Times.

Until 2012 when printing is completethe company’s books served as the world’s oldest continuously-published, English-language encyclopedias, essentially collecting all the world’s knowledge in one place, before Google or Wikipedia. It helped Britannica usher in the age of AI, where models use high-quality, from access to verified information. More general models like ChatGPT suffer from hallucinations because they have roamed the entire Internet, including all junk and misinformation.

Although it still offers an online edition of its encyclopedia, as well as the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Britannica’s biggest business today is selling online education software to schools and libraries, the software it hopes to supercharge with AI The idea is that students will enjoy learning more when the software can help them understand the subject matter. gaps and linger on it Another educational technology company, With the brainrecently announced that its chatbot responses will link to the exact learning materials (i.e. textbooks) they refer to.

CEO of Britannica Jorge reason also said Times about the company Britannica AI chatbotwhich allows users to ask questions about its vast database of encyclopedic knowledge that it has collected from two centuries of vetted scholars and editors.The company similarly offers chatbot software for customer service use cases.

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

An educational book company that has seen its fortunes reverse is Chegg a sharp drop in the share price With the growth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the move has almost been blocked as students have canceled their subscriptions to its online knowledge platform.

Like the rise of Wikipedia, many people seem to appreciate the accessibility and convenience of ChatGPT, even if they know it can’t be completely trusted.Chegg has long had an online Q&A platform where users can pay to post questions and to get answers. But during the pandemic, it saw a flood of new users, forcing contractors to answer new questions, and users simply couldn’t keep up with ChatGPT are that Chegg solutions are often wrong, especially when submitted by other users rather than experts.

Perhaps Britannica’s brand and heritage will help it succeed in this new era, where chatbots still tend to return incorrect information.It seems that schools are at least willing to pay for access to something they are more confident in.