I 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.<p>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.<p>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.
Britannica 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.<p>I wonder if that content trains their AI and how much difference it makes.<p>Also, is there value in training an AI on a dictionary? It would lead to poor writing style.
A 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.
A 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.
Oh 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.
We 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.<p>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.
The 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.
>Britannica Didn’t Just Survive. It’s an A.I. Company Now.<p>I wouldn't call that surviving. It's like someone reanimating your corpse and pretending it's still you.