Year: 2025

Announcing our partnership with Pangram Labs

Published by Bruna Martins

Of all the resources and infrastructure that make World History Encyclopedia a reliable resource to readers worldwide, the most important is our Editorial Policy, which is closely implemented by our incredible editorial team. In 2025, we updated this policy to also address the use of AI: “In accordance with our AI Policy, all article submissions must be written by humans; we do not accept AI-generated or AI-assisted writing”. As AI-based tools are developed and improved over time, identifying content written by or with AI has become increasingly difficult. This is why we are happy to announce we are partnering with Pangram Labs, the leading AI detector tool, to use their technology to assess the content we receive. About Pangram Pangram’s AI text detection model was developed by researchers and, according to studies, provides accuracy of 99%. Their research methods are openly published in favour of transparency, and their specific approach to development allows the platform to be improved over time.  You can read more about Pangram’s AI detection model on their website. What does this …

Students at computers with screens that include a representation of a retinal scanner with pixelation and binary data overlays and a brightly coloured datawave heatmap at the top.

AI in Education: Promise and Peril

Published by Bruna Martins

Content written by the Educators Council team, originally published as the October 2025 Educators Newsletter. Image credits: Kathryn Conrad / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming part of classrooms and students’ daily lives. While it promises new ways to learn, research, and engage, experts are increasingly warning about its dangers, particularly for young people. At our recent Educators’ Council meeting (August 27), members shared how students are already struggling with long texts and turning to AI for shorter, easier summaries. As one council member put it, “We are preparing a generation of visual learners, but they must still learn to read deeply and evaluate critically.” This shift is only part of the story. Behind the convenience of AI lies a complex set of risks, from accuracy problems to serious threats to mental health. The Dark Side of AI Engagement AI chatbots are not neutral. They are designed to keep users engaged, using human-like responses, emotional cues, and conversational tricks. This can encourage dependence, distraction, and in some cases, harm. A few examples highlighted in the media were:  …

Announcing History AI Chat

Published by Jan van der Crabben

We are excited to announce the launch of our History AI Chat – a new way to explore the vast historical knowledge stored on World History Encyclopedia. It’s a credible AI using only reliable sources, designed for educational use. 🏛️ Credible Sources & Trustworthy AI ChatGPT and other popular AI chatbots draw on the entire internet to provide answers, including both reliable sources (such as our website) and unreliable sources (such as Reddit forums or social media). That’s great if you want to get product recommendations or recipes, but not so much for historical research. The World History Encyclopedia AI only draws on reliable, human-created and reviewed sources This groundbreaking new AI tool is made possible through a collaboration between World History Encyclopedia, Open University (CORE) and Perplexity AI. As everything on World History Encyclopedia, our History AI Chat is entirely free of charge to everyone! 🎓 Designed for Education Schools are incredibly important to us at World History Encyclopedia: It is our mission to support history education and provide teachers and students with precisely …

Why Non-Profits Must Make a Profit

Why Non-Profits Must Make a Profit

Published by Jan van der Crabben

As you know, World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organisation, and proudly so. Having a mission for the greater good and not answering to investors or shareholders allows us to focus on doing the right thing, not on revenue.  Revenue is always a secondary consideration for us. For example, last month we were approached with an opportunity to allow political advertising on our website, which we were told would increase our advertising revenue in the coming months due to the election in the United States this year. However, we turned down the offer as we take a strictly neutral and non-political stance, which is important to our mission. Nevertheless, non-profit organisations (including ours) actually need to make a profit. This may seem counterintuitive at first given their name, but it is true: Without profits, a non-profit organisation will struggle to improve, grow, survive and ultimately fail to fulfil its stated mission and purpose. What is a Non-Profit Organisation? Before we dive into my argument, let’s examine what “non-profit” actually means. The precise definition is slightly …

AI at World History Encyclopedia

Published by Jan van der Crabben

With the start of 2025, we have now firmly arrived in the era of artificial intelligence. When people search for information on Google, they are now presented with an AI-generated answer to their question for an increasing number of search queries. As a result, we have seen a noticeable drop in visitors to our website coming from Google – why visit a website when Google gives you the answer? Artificial intelligence puts in question the very  idea of an encyclopedia, and information-based publishing in general. Any publication that is not focused on entertainment or news, but rather evergreen informational content, is challenged by artificial intelligence. Certainly, AI frequently makes mistakes at the moment, but most answers are “correct enough” for the general public and AI companies are working hard to solve this issue. Since the start of the year, we have been working on developing our organisation’s strategy for 2025 and beyond. We have to adapt to this changing environment of technology and media – and embrace AI in one way or another. AI is …

Is the Ancient Alien Theory Racist?

Published by Jan van der Crabben

There is a theory that keeps reappearing in popular culture, each time with slight variations and different names, but the core remains the same: “Those ancient people couldn’t possibly have built this, so someone else must have.”  While the first part of the theory is pretty constant, the “someone else” part changes: In Erich von Däniken’s popular 1968 book Chariot of the Gods he points to extraterrestrials. So does the highly successful Ancient Aliens television series that has been running continuously since 2009 – now in its 19th season! Netflix was heavily criticised by historians and archaeologists for its 2022 docu-series Ancient Apocalypse featuring Graham Hancock and his belief in an Ice Age “Atlantean” civilisation.  It is rather straightforward for historians and archaeologists to discredit beliefs in aliens, Atlantean civilisations, and other supposed high-technology precursors. I will leave the debunking to the experts who have already done so at length. This article is about the other part of the hypothesis: “Those ancient people couldn’t possibly have built this.” While this may seem innocent at first …