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 no longer coming; it has now entered the building. Unless the future outlined in Frank Herbert’s Dune sci-fi novels comes to pass and there is a “Butlerian Jihad” (a war against the machines that leads to the outlawing of AI), the technology is here to stay.
The internet is already being flooded by AI-generated low-quality content. Major publications already use artificial intelligence to generate content at scale. Bloomberg uses AI to generate a third of the 5000 articles it publishes every day. Based on my personal experience, I am seeing phrases and structures frequently generated by AI in Forbes and in many other publications, too. AI-generated content is becoming ubiquitous.
What does this mean for World History Encyclopedia?
Our AI Philosophy
We continue to believe in human authorship, especially for history, where contextualisation, interpretation, and critical thinking are key. History is not a collection of dates and facts: It is the story of how we arrived where we are today. It allows us to make sense of the present, which is a prerequisite for building a better future.
Only humans have the ability to make these connections, understand motivations, emotions, and the human experience. As such, it is humans who need to write our shared world history. We do not use AI to write articles, and we instantly reject AI-written submissions to our encyclopedia (we do check using both AI detection tools and human judgement). Our publication is and will remain a human authored endeavour.
Still, we are adapting to a future that looks to be increasingly dominated by algorithms and artificial intelligence. What will a 21st century encyclopedia look like? It certainly will involve the use of AI.
Artificial intelligence excels at very different tasks, particularly those related to the retrieval of information, the analysis of large volumes of data, and the transformation of content. It is for those tasks where the capabilities of computers exceed those of humans that we intend to use artificial intelligence at World History Encyclopedia.
Concrete AI Plans
At the end of 2024, we entered into a partnership agreement with Perplexity AI. Using their technology, we have already implemented summaries in our website search function. When you search for something, or ask a question, you will now receive an AI answer based solely on World History Encyclopedia’s content, with citations.
This is only the first step: This year we intend to build the first history AI, a tool that works like ChatGPT, which answers questions about history based on our encyclopedia, and with which users can converse. It will cite its sources on our encyclopedia, and we will work closely with educators to ensure that it supports their teaching – not give students the answers that they should learn through their own research.
We are also using AI to categorise our content: You may have noticed that a date filter is now available on our search page (on desktop computers, at least). This filter allows you to search for content within a specific date range. Instead of our editors combing through over 20,000 published pieces of content on our website, artificial intelligence is determining the date ranges for each article, image, and other content on our website. We intend to extend this automatic categorisation of content to other criteria, such as geographical locations (countries, cities) in the near future.
Our translation department has been utilising AI for several years, even before ChatGPT was announced. In order to verify the accuracy of translations into 42 languages, our translation editors use AI to reverse-translate into English, comparing the translations to the original side-by-side, paragraph-by-paragraph – at least for languages that our team does not speak.
Teachers and students are key audiences using World History Encyclopedia and AI can also help make our content more suitable for different age levels. We plan on using AI to summarize our content and use less complex language so that it is suitable for younger students (we currently aim for high school age). Possibly, such summaries could even be adjusted to the precise needs of each teacher. Once again, we will work closely with educators to ensure their needs are met.
Finally, AI is able to convert content. We already use AI to read aloud our articles directly on the website. This makes it easier for many students to engage with our text; including those who are more auditory learners or children with reading difficulties. AI is now able to provide human-like voiceover for videos and it is able to convert one (or multiple) articles into podcasts, both of which are capabilities we intend to explore.
Human Centered AI
At World History Encyclopedia we believe that artificial intelligence is best used when it benefits humans, not replaces them. We focus on ensuring that AI supports the efforts of our team and our readers, very much along the lines of what Man Ray said about photography in the early 20th century: “I photograph what I do not wish to paint, and I paint what I cannot photograph.” If you are interested in learning more, we have now published an AI Policy on our website that outlines our use of artificial intelligence.
