Falling for the Old Technology News Issue, a commentary

 

This image represents the challenge of relying on outdated technology news in a rapidly evolving world. While the subject focuses on obsolete information like 56k modems and floppy disks, the environment outside is already moving forward with 5G networks, AI, and advanced electric vehicles. It highlights the potential for confusion and misinformation when using historical "innovations" to interpret the current tech landscape.

The current obsession with AI hallucinations exemplifies how obsolete perspectives can overshadow innovation. Many treat the risk of fabrications as a dispositive reason to reject AI, failing to recognize that while hallucinations remain a factor, they should not preclude a serious investigation into the technology's broader utility.

One simple response to this concern is asking if the person making the comment is familiar with the workflow model developed by Google using Gemini, Gems, and NotebookLM. In addition, there are other workflow models that use redundancy to diminish the possibility of fabrication or hallucination. The chatbot is simply asked to criticize the accuracy of its statements. Another alternative is to instruct the chatbot to stop when it cannot substantiate the accuracy of its statements. There has also been a significant effort on the part of the AI developers to curtail hallucinations. 

Because of my age, I also encounter people who fear technology in any form. Most of their fear stems from the constant reports on the media about how AI is going to destroy the world in some form or another. 

It took more than 30 years for cars to replace horses. Generative AI (GenAI) is being adopted faster than any previous technology, including the internet and personal computers, with nearly 40% of U.S. adults aged 18–64 using it by August 2024. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just 0.2 years (around two months), whereas the internet took years to reach similar milestones. See The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI

Using Google"s NotebookLM, I can search 600 pages of genealogically valuable information in a matter of minutes and most of the time I spend reading and analyzing the responses. FamilySearch.org's Full Text Search is able to search millions of pages of documents in a few seconds and find an individual name or other similar information. This frees me from sitting in front of a microfilm reader for 8 hours to find one name in one document. 

I guess, as a genealogist, that I am caught between dealing with people still mired in a paper-based technology while working hard to keep up with the advancements in AI that change our entire way of doing research.