Comment by lacewing
9 days ago
> Personally, I do not know a better alternative.
For a long time, traditional encyclopedias had a much better track record on topics related to politics and society, simply because their editor selection process largely eliminated single-issue crusading. You wouldn't be picked to lead a particular domain unless your academic track record made it clear that you're level-headed.
But I think that AI, just like your X friend anecdote, actually illustrates an interesting point: most of the time, when we consult some sort of an online reference, we're not doing anything important, so the accuracy is not critical. Quite often, we're just trying to validate our beliefs or win online arguments. An LLM that's 90% accurate but sounds 120% authoritative (and almost always willing to support your priors) is perfect for that.
> For a long time, traditional encyclopedias had a much better track record on topics related to politics and society, simply because their editor selection process largely eliminated single-issue crusading
That's a bit debatable. Traditional encyclopedias also had articles that were far from perfect, some of which had biases (not to mention there wasn't just one traditional encyclopedia. Different ones were of different quality). I think more research would be needed to figure out which is better.