Have you seen “Genealogy and AI”?

Question

Worth watching:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=exepLKC72Ts&pp=ygUQYWkgYW5kIGdlbmVhbG9neQ%3D%3D

Jen Baldwin from Findmypast and Blain Bettinger discuss the future of AI-assisted genealogy research, with a particular focus on ChatGPT. As AI tools for genealogy research, including ChatGPT and Google Translate, are still in their infancy, they do not replace the need for a professional genealogist to analyze the data but can speed up the research process by finding information more rapidly. The use of ChatGPT for genealogy research is a promising development, but it requires more accuracy and fact-checking. Nonetheless, the integration of AI and genealogy research has the potential to revolutionize the study of family history and lineage.

Answer 1

I have been using AI for my own family genealogy for a few months now... as a test.  Some inaccuracies that are quite funny and 100% wrong but also quite efficient to do some basics as well as flush out time periods, events, and historical data.

As a matter of fact, I've been using it for WikiTree Bingo for a while now.  If you have watched a Bingo session with a presentation added to it, that was all AI (images and text).  I had to fact check a few points but the timesaving has been tremendous!  

Amy Crow Johnson also talked about using ChatGPT and the link is here.  

NOTE:  I use at any given time:  Google's BARD for AI in addition to ChatGPT.  And Canva's AI to create the presentations.

Answer 2

I found the video a good introduction to the topic. They have a follow-up video discussing prompts, which was also pretty good. I will note that ChatGPT 4 is far more accurate than version 3.5. I've had little issue with its accuracy.

I generally think of ChatGPT as a bright and knowledgeable junior assistant.

If I give it specific information, it can write some copy for me. I can ask it to write in different styles for different audiences. It can write me a short report on various historical contexts. It can extract information from dense blocks of text. I needed to learn to work with it. It lacks all contextual understanding of the tasks you set, so you need to provide solid background or detailed direction in your prompts.

More interestingly, I can bounce ideas off of it or ask it for its opinion or analysis. It usually doesn't solve my problem for me, but it certainly helps me consider the problem from different angles.

I can imagine in a few years, working with ChatGPT will be more like working with a peer and in a few more, I might just be the client or the manager, directing the work. We'll see if there is a ceiling on this.