ROOTS & BRANCHES

My friend and fervent “Roots & Branches” reader Eric “Rick” Bender of New Mexico often has some words to say about the column.

When I noted a couple of months ago that one of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn more about what ethical uses of artificial intelligence there are to help with my genealogy, Bender naturally chimed in with a response.

 “There was an entry many years ago for Sarah A. (Tice) Bender,” Bender related. “It was wrong; she was Sarah M.”

He says he found both ‘A.’ and ‘M.’ himself at the Lebanon County Historical Society “and I spotted the Sarah A. entry for years in other people’s work and I knew immediately where it came from. There are other little facts like that that show up and I know to ignore them because I did the research myself.”

But now—and I bet you guessed it!—Bender says the computers (AI) are picking up those mistakes. “Here we go again: Sarah A.,” he lamented.

“Who’s going to keep it clean? I’m not opposed to computers (I was a trained programmer myself, once.) (Could still do it.) And AI’s advance is unstoppable; should be helpful in many ways. BUT! We have to be vigilant,” Bender noted.

He cited a case of what might be a tombstone cutter’s error making a John Bender who died in Indiana and a Johannes Bender born in Pennsylvania into two people that are probably just one. The birth year on the Indiana tombstone is a year off from the Pennsylvania birth but there’s not another birth for a John/Johannes Bender to be found anywhere.

 “I spoke with someone who did the Indiana research. I also spoke with others who used that unproven (I say) birth date as matter-of-fact. (Maybe it is accurate. I don’t know.) People get mad because I question it. How angry will they be when I question a robot?” Bender asked.

“Then of course, there’s the writing,” Bender wrote. “I appreciate Spell Check (believe me!); and I don’t object to suggestions regarding brevity, but if I tell someone I’m at the corner of Candelaria & Juan Tabo, I don’t like seeing ‘I’ sent, ‘Candelabra and John aboy.’”

Needless to say, I share many of Bender’s caveats, including his final assessment on AI: “Might prove tricky. We keep reinventing fire and we seem to always make it hotter. I think television numbed us and ruined our attention spans; computers and calculators made us stop thinking; cell phones give instant access to unwise responses.  (We don’t write letters any more, we just use letters for abbreviated text.) And AI tries to anticipate what we’re trying to say.  All to ‘the betterment of mankind.’”