AI and genealogy

[mikbone]

I had an hour meeting yesterday on family search that was a complete waste of time.  I might rant about it later…

Anyways, my mother did 5-6 generations of my tree.  But I haven't done much personally.

I plan to make it a hobby upon retirement.  And might be able to retire early.

The question is, why doesn’t the church invest in AI, do some fancy programming and let it go HAM on the world family tree?

 

[Vort]

We should be within one generation (human generation, not software generation) of mapping out at least the bones of the tree of human descent and identifying people's ancestry to a surprisingly specific degree just by swabbing their cheeks. Lots of old bones to be found in that closet. But nothing disinfects like sunshine.

[mikbone]

Yeah, Im kinda reluctant to spend a whole lot of time and energy linking a chain that a computer and lab can knock out in seconds.  

I figure the sooner we get a jump on it the better.  Apparently we still have microfilm in our libraries.  Digitize everything.

Take the $$ we would spend on a temple or 2 and get a records department set up.

[LDSGator]

16 minutes ago, mikbone said:

I had an hour meeting yesterday on family search that was a complete waste of time.  I might rant about it later…

You aren’t alone. Genealogy isn’t my biggest  interest either.

[mikbone]

I know there are legal issues, HIPPA, companies making money off genealogy, etc.

Every once in a while I check the family tree / ancestry app and there will be a message from an unhinged person complaining that my mom’s info is wrong and to stop making changes.  We have the documentation and pictures. 

[Vort]

25 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

43 minutes ago, mikbone said:

I had an hour meeting yesterday on family search that was a complete waste of time.  I might rant about it later…

You aren’t alone. Genealogy isn’t my biggest  interest either.

I suspect that mik was speaking as one who likes genealogy. I am one of those, and I have found many meetings and classes to be light on information content and not a seemingly very productive use of my time.

[LDSGator]

2 minutes ago, Vort said:

I suspect that mik was speaking as one who likes genealogy. I am one of those, and I have found many meetings and classes to be light on information content and not a seemingly very productive use of my time.

Sorry if I misread. I have nothing against it-I view genealogy the way I view knitting. If it’s your thing and makes you happy, great. Just not for me. 

[Vort]

14 minutes ago, LDSGator said:

Sorry if I misread. I have nothing against it-I view genealogy the way I view knitting. If it’s your thing and makes you happy, great. Just not for me. 

Funny you should say that. I realized decades ago that knitting was an amazing thing. I told myself I would learn how to knit one day. So far, I haven't. But I have had my wife show me how to make the stitches. Maybe that will be a retirement hobby.

[mikbone]

Still waiting for someone with a good background in genealogy and computers to help me out.

[mikbone]

I think the hardest part will be digitizing the records in our country first then getting into foreign countries.  By the time we have a good database quantum computers might be online.

[LDSGator]

25 minutes ago, Vort said:

Funny you should say that. I realized decades ago that knitting was an amazing thing

My mom crochets things all the time. 

[e v e]

2 hours ago, mikbone said:

I had an hour meeting yesterday on family search that was a complete waste of time.  I might rant about it later…

Anyways, my mother did 5-6 generations of my tree.  But I haven't done much personally.

I plan to make it a hobby upon retirement.  And might be able to retire early.

The question is, why doesn’t the church invest in AI, do some fancy programming and let it go HAM on the world family tree?

 

Not to be a Luddite, and, I am not LDS, but it seems to me that AI is a consciousness distant from the soul 

and her ability to hear God and understand things... and, not a thing from God that could bring us closer to God.

 

[e v e]

1 minute ago, e v e said:

Not to be a Luddite, and, I am not LDS, but it seems to me that AI is a consciousness distant from the soul 

and her ability to hear God and understand things... and, not a thing from God that could bring us closer to God.

 

Also, I am related to Pelayo (Pelagius), and to Ponce de Leon. My cousin in Madrid has genealogical records going back to almost 0 AD! She is a crazy catholic and is only doing it to find out about titles her children may be entitled to. She does that full time...and none of it in in any database. It's all on paper... she visited churches, tiny and large, all through Spain to find all the information she needed and did this full time. LOL. But I have avoided ALL genealogy because I feel uncomfortable with it...so what I know about Pelagius is through her. As for Ponce de Leon, that is the other side of the family. I've never been LDS and I am not criticizing genealogy per se...but now all privacy is going away and that makes me feel something to be wrong. I've an account on the LDS geneaology site mentioned, but am afraid to use it.

[Vort]

Just now, e v e said:

I have avoided ALL genealogy because I feel uncomfortable with it...so what I know about Pelagius is through her. As for Ponce de Leon, that is the other side of the family. I've never been LDS and I am not criticizing genealogy per se...but now all privacy is going away and that makes me feel something to be wrong.

Genealogy is not removing privacy. Your ancestry is literally as transparently obvious as the nose on your face. Learning our ancestry should never be considered taboo or distasteful. We are what and who we are, and self-discovery should in all cases be a destination of primary importance.

[NeuroTypical]

10 minutes ago, e v e said:

AI is a consciousness distant from the soul 

and her ability to hear God and understand things...

AI isn't a consciousness.  From my understanding, AI is:

- A big pile of data that humans have created
- The ability to sort through it and arrange it in faster ways than anything else we've figured out.  Sometimes better ways, sometimes not so great.
- The ability to present these findings in ways that mimic the ways humans have been communicating.

It's as much a consciousness as a steam engine, or a language, or a vaccine.  This is a pretty fun video:
https://i.imgur.com/riRtiHX.mp4

Edited June 24 by NeuroTypical

[NeuroTypical]

 

7 minutes ago, e v e said:

I am not criticizing genealogy per se...but now all privacy is going away and that makes me feel something to be wrong.

I'm having a hard time producing a similar feeling, or thinking of genealogical data in terms as "privacy going away".   So... are you, like, also uncomfortable that cemeteries have stones in them containing people's names and birthdays?   And are you against the US census?

[e v e]

27 minutes ago, Vort said:

Genealogy is not removing privacy. Your ancestry is literally as transparently obvious as the nose on your face. Learning our ancestry should never be considered taboo or distasteful. We are what and who we are, and self-discovery should in all cases be a destination of primary importance.

I see what you mean but what about how that information is used and who owns it, sells it, shares it, and decides what is done with it... Anyway, I am sure I am less familiar with the topic than you are. I only have the little bits my cousin passed along. I was also disappointed when the window closed to regain Spanish citizenship, in a special program Spain had for a while for all those it kicked out (around the time of american revolution), so I could be dual US and Spanish...  but it is impossible now. My cousin is not even a US Citizen and she is a literally a daughter of the american revolution because her ancestor was Dusquesne. Anyway... on my end, it seems that getting records is very difficult...though I am spanish, but born in Cuba, the woman I hired in Cuba to find my records stood in line for a long long time and in the end no records. Possibly because my father knew Fidel personally, as well as Batista..and the records were scrubbed. My birth certificate does not exist anymore or is lost.. and all that is left is my baptismal certificate from a diocese in Havana, and I do have that because the family had its own family bishop who only attended to the family. We have 20K family members in south florida right now and in cuba we had whole blocks of a suburb of only the family. There is also a book about my family on archive.org, because we along with DuPont, started that company. But then parted ways when the factory had its explosion that killed many workers. So I do know a bit about the family (and it is good to know), and have copies of some of the family genealogy books that are available on 2 sides of my mothers family... but the spanish side is all on paper. If I ever needed a birth certificate I would need to go to Cuba myself and investigate... I don't know that I can. 

Edited June 24 by e v e
typos

[mikbone]

19 minutes ago, e v e said:

Not to be a Luddite, and, I am not LDS, but it seems to me that AI is a consciousness distant from the soul 

and her ability to hear God and understand things... and, not a thing from God that could bring us closer to God.

 

AI is just better computing power and programming.  It is very good at putting together puzzles and finding solutions.

Genealogy seems a perfect fit.  We are not trying to get into any personal information and it doesn't really have anything to do with spirituality.  Just record keeping and clarification of family trees.

In the USA - Birth, death, and marriage records become public records after a certain period of time, which varies by state. Typically, birth records become public after 100 years, death records after 50-75 years, and marriage records after 50 years.

 

[e v e]

11 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

 

I'm having a hard time producing a similar feeling, or thinking of genealogical data in terms as "privacy going away".   So... are you, like, also uncomfortable that cemeteries have stones in them containing people's names and birthdays?   And are you against the US census?

I'm not against it at all... I just feel strange putting my information out there and stopped adding information on Family Search. I do have some documents scanned from that attempt to get spanish citizenship, going back to great-great on the spanish side... but I just froze about putting the info there. I have no problem with cemeteries which have names and birthdays. It's the databasing and use of the data in that form which is searchable that seems a bit much.

[e v e]

2 minutes ago, mikbone said:

AI is just better computing power and programming.  It is very good at putting together puzzles and finding solutions.

Genealogy seems a perfect fit.  We are not trying to get into any personal information and it doesn't really have anything to do with spirituality.  Just record keeping and clarification of family trees.

In the USA - Birth, death, and marriage records become public records after a certain period of time, which varies by state. Typically, birth records become public after 100 years, death records after 50-75 years, and marriage records after 50 years.

 

I didn't know that about public vs. private and how they get published. 

[NeuroTypical]

I guess I understand your feelings, I've just never heard someone having them before.  My experience is nothing but "Thank you for uploading that information about your father - it helps me remember what a great guy he was!"

(My father was a totally unreligious drinking, gambling, swearing WWII vet who yelled at everything and everybody.  But folks remember him fondly.)

[e v e]

3 minutes ago, mikbone said:

AI is just better computing power and programming.  It is very good at putting together puzzles and finding solutions.

Genealogy seems a perfect fit.  We are not trying to get into any personal information and it doesn't really have anything to do with spirituality.  Just record keeping and clarification of family trees.

In the USA - Birth, death, and marriage records become public records after a certain period of time, which varies by state. Typically, birth records become public after 100 years, death records after 50-75 years, and marriage records after 50 years.

 

How can it have nothing to do with our spiritual situation ? Rhetorical question but I do not agree with that... I feel where we come from does have to do with our relationship with God.

[e v e]

2 minutes ago, e v e said:

How can it have nothing to do with our spiritual situation ? Rhetorical question but I do not agree with that... I feel where we come from does have to do with our relationship with God.

So..in the late 1800s my ancestor was a mayor of Cuba who spoke about slavery being evil. There is a town in Cuba, with my family name, but all those living there were emancipated slaves. They kept my family name because they were freed on the day purchased, and were never slaves from that day forward. So when a different cousin from Denmark went to Cuba the entire town went crazy and kept her awake for days celebrating... Another cousin died in Fidel's jail of suicide and her husband, a japanese General, committed seppuku when he learned of her suicide. The family priest, a catholic, was Bellarmino. I always wondered about where he went and what happened to him after Fidel took over but never researched it. I could probably spend weeks on Family Search and still not run out of things to enter to the system. LOL. When could I do all this... it all takes time. There is an LDS library around here as well, but I have never been there. I hear it has more capabilities. Again I am curious about it all but the AI thing I am not keen on when it comes to this topic.

[mikbone]

12 minutes ago, e v e said:

How can it have nothing to do with our spiritual situation ? Rhetorical question but I do not agree with that... I feel where we come from does have to do with our relationship with God.

computers just collate records.  They don't have feelings or spirituality.

Obviously, you can have feelings and spiritual reactions from data but that doesn't have anything to do with the compiling of the data. 

[zil2]

25 minutes ago, mikbone said:

putting together puzzles and finding solutions

Just yesterday I was wondering if I fed some AI engine all the clues to a logic puzzle if it could figure it out.   (I love doing logic puzzles - very relaxing way to clear the mind before starting something that needs focus.)