AI, Education, and Genealogy

 

Volunteering in a library in a large university, I have a significant amount of contact with university students. Since my primary activity is teaching and supporting other volunteer missionaries and patrons of the library, I also have a significant contact with a broad spectrum of ages and backgrounds. In this context, I am in a somewhat unique position to see the impact of AI both in and out of a university environment. Currently, three of the large online family tree database programs, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, and MyHeritage.com, all have AI involvement. The university, however, has mixed reactions as an institution about the use and implementation of AI in the classrooms. 

It is interesting that the overall main reaction with all of the individuals that I interface with seems to be based on the initial announcements that were made about AI more than three years ago. There is a correlation between the reaction of most of the public to the FamilySearch.org website with concerns about the changes made to an open AI-based family tree and the consistent initial fear of AI hallucinations. Individuals associated with the University have a broad spectrum of response to and implementation of AI. This attitude is generally a reflection of articles such these. 

Knight, Will. “Using AI for Just 10 Minutes Might Make You Lazy and Dumb, Study Shows.” Tags. Wired, May 6, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/using-ai-negative-impact-thinking-problem-solving-study/. 

AI Chatbots Could Be Making You Stupider.” April 20, 2026. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider.

This list could go on and on. It has been interesting to me to note that this reaction to AI is almost exactly the same as the reactions to hand-held calculators. Here is a citation to a Masters Thesis on this topic. 

Banks, Sarah A. "A Historical Analysis of Attitudes Toward the Use of Calculators in Junior High and High School Math Classrooms in the United States since 1975." Master’s thesis, Cedarville University, 2011. See chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED525547.pdf

Here is a quote from this Master's Thesis"

"The onset of calculators initially brought concerns that this new technology was not fully understood nor would be appropriately utilized by educators and that the effects on students were unknown.  Future research studying how children were affected and the necessary changes to curriculum was recommended (“Math in the Schools,” 1975).  At this time, some educators feared that students would not be able to retain their knowledge of simple arithmetic if they learned to use a calculator before fully grasping basic mathematical concepts.   Other teachers, however, saw calculators as a chance to increase student motivation by using more “real-life” problems (Pendelton, 1975)."

Traditional genealogy involves a significant amount of drudgery such as untold hours of combing through old documents page by page, either on a microfilm viewer or in documents themselves in an archive.

Here is a not-so-hypothetical problem faced by many research genealogists. In doing research in a single parish in England or some other country, you find many people with exactly the same names. Separating out the individuals into families, into unique families, is a tremendous challenge. Over the past three years, I have begun to develop a methodology to use AI to solve this particular challenge. The results have been spectacularly successful. Now, because I have used AI rather than sitting in front of a microfilm reader or scrolling through endless digital documents, I am wondering if my brain is now fried. Or is it the other way around? My brain was being fried by sitting in front of a microfilm reader, and now I have time to think about actually working on the documents. 

AI is here to stay. It will only become more useful and more universally used. Rather than worrying about whether students are going to lose intelligence by using AI, perhaps the educators should spend some time trying to figure out how to help them responsibly use AI. 

By the way, this particular post was admirably assisted by AI voice recognition so that I didn't have to type this whole thing into my computer.

Using AI as an excuse or as a crutch probably has the same effect as spending time with video games or social media.  But continuing to use hallucinations as an excuse for failure to learn about or utilize AI will have the same effect as these other computer interactions.  Using AI with Google Gemini, NotebookLM, and Google Gems can effectively reduce hallucinations to almost nonexistence. Additionally, utilizing carefully drafted prompts can substantially increase AI's accuracy.