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CRAIGEN.org
Education
The use of AI creates new opportunities and risks. Therefore, members of the genealogical community educate themselves about AI to maximize its benefits and minimize its risks to their work.
For all the years I was an active, practicing, attorney in Arizona, I had to take 15 hours of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) and at least three of those hours had to be professional responsibility/ethics. These were in person or online classes. However, I also had to do a considerable amount of self-education because every legal case I took had its own facts and supporting case law. If I wanted to continue practicing my profession, I had to maintain both the compulsory education and serious, necessary self-education.When I first began investigating my own genealogy, 43 years ago, I was totally unaware of any educational opportunities for learning about how to proceed with my own genealogical research. I was not aware of anyone around me who was involved in genealogy, certainly, not in my family or close associates. Of course, in 1982 when I began, the internet was still year away for its "birthdate" on January 1, 1983 when ARPANET adopted the TCP/IP protocol, allowing diverse networks to "talk" to each other and forming the foundation of the modern Internet. The development continued with the World Wide Web in 1991 and user-friendly browsers like Mosaic in 1993, which led to the Internet's mainstream public adoption. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet.
I quickly began to realize my lack of experience and education despite three college level degrees, a B.A., an M.A. and a J.D. Fortunately for my own realization of the need for education, there were books. However, I spent the first few years unaware of any genealogists, genealogical societies, or Family History Centers. The first step I took towards my formal genealogical education was with the following book.
Greenwood, Val D. 1978. The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy. Baltimore: Genealogical Publ. Co.
Over the years, I also discovered the following books.
Filby, P. William. 1984. The Source : A Guidebook of American Genealogy. Edited by Arlene H. Eakle and Johni Cerny. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry Publishing Company.
Herber, Mark D and Society of Genealogists (Great Britain). Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History. Genealogical Pub. Co., Inc, 1998.
And many others. As time passed and as I began to obtain an idea about the complexities of genealogical research, I decided to take distance learning family history classes from Brigham Young University. I took classes for about five years and these were the hardest classes I had experienced even with all my past formal education (including law school).
Eventually, my practical education began when I volunteered to work at the Mesa Multi-Stake Family History Center in Mesa, Arizona. I am still spending most of my time learning and helping others to learn.
So, now you might begin to understand why I think Education is one of the guiding principles for responsible AI in genealogy. The key words in the Education Guiding Principal are "members of the genealogical community educate themselves." Enough said. Now, you can learn all you can stand by asking one of the chatbots how to do genealogical research and keep asking.
