“Citations Needed: Magic Encyclopedias to Save the World” by Oliver Sourbut

About this episode

Oliver Sourbut discusses the importance of creating reliable knowledge bases using AI.

Last week FLF launched a competition “to find the best workflows and methodologies for using AI to produce reliable, trustworthy knowledge bases”. I had (and have ongoing) a substantial role in that effort. Why do I think it's so important? It's a lot of reasons actually! I’ll gesture at a few here. Conjuring a magic encyclopedia For now, assume with me that it can be done. Wish away with me the various technical and financial challenges. Great! Now we can rapidly conjure up a deeply, fully researched knowledge base on any topic. All claims point back to who's said them, in what context, and (importantly) with what justifications and evidence (if any). Any quibbles or nuances which have been expressed on a point are similarly readily available. It's not opinionated: all competing viewpoints with their associated justifications are associated and comparable. That's way, way too much information! Imagine trying to read everything ever about diet or shipping or taxes or microbes. It's not happening. So as well as this, we now magically have tools which gather similar points together, summarise, and can make a decent stab at which points we’ll consider most or least relevant. We can…

People in this episode

Guest: Oliver Sourbut

Topics covered

• AI
• knowledge bases
• reliable information
• methodologies
• information overload

Keywords

• AI
• knowledge base
• reliable information
• methodologies
• information overload
• Citations Needed
• FLF

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: FLF

Books & works: Citations Needed

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