I am excited to be invited to present in person and online!
On Friday, I will be presenting Ancestors, AI, and Prompt Engineering.
On Saturday, I will be presenting a Crash Course in Researching Ancestors in the US Military.
There are great speakers, and great talks, Friday and Saturday. There is also an optional Beginner Day on Thursday, featuring four lectures just for beginners!
It has been a while since there has been a blog post. In that time, I have been working on my newest presentation, Mining Morning Reports for Genealogical Gold. You can read a review here: https://aweekofgenealogy.com/comments
In addition to getting ready for other presentations, I have also been experimenting with the NARA Catalog API to get an alternate way of searching the catalog.
I did spend some time with AI offerings in my research into the Rev. Fr. Thomas J. Kennedy.
First, I uploaded the sketch that I have of him from the newspaper to ChatGPT and prompted it to: Change this line drawing into a picture
A few liberties were taken by the built-in DALL·E image generation system when creating this image. In the sketch it does appear that he is probably wearing a cassock of the time, but the details of buttons and the notch in the collar are not evident in the sketch.
I may need to try this process again with a stricter prompt to rein in ChatGPT’s creative vision.
I looked up his eye color recorded in a Civil War roster and asked in a follow-on prompt asked: can the image be changed so that his eyes are more grey
The resulting image looked less like the sketch.
Since the Rev. Fr. Kennedy was dying at the time of the column in the Brooklyn Eagle, it finally occurred to me that there must have been a photo of him that was used as the basis of this sketch. I have not located one yet. This image also looks like that of a younger man. My focus has been on the data, but it seems I may need to be searching for the original photo of him. Does the original photo still exist? (Although the Archivist at the Diocesan Archives of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn was very helpful, they did not have a deceased priest personnel file for him at in their archives because he had died in Kentucky and not in Brooklyn.)
Using the original sketch, I did a Google Image search at https://images.google.com, adding the search terms: Kennedy Brooklyn
Naturally, our blog posts showed up, and data about the life of the Rev Fr. Thomas J. Kennedy extracted from the blog posts appeared in the AI summary. Many of the photos that were returned in the results were of men religious of all different faiths.
The “Dive Deeper in AI Mode” button that appeared at the end of the AI Summary made me curious, so I clicked on it. Gemini let me know the number of sites it was searching, and informed me about two sites: our blog and the New York Times. There was an article from the NY Times dated Oct. 5, 1901: “Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying.”
Our county library has a subscription to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers, which includes the New York Times, so I logged in and searched for the article using these search terms:
Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying 1901
There were three results, two of which were ads from the 1970s.
The New York Times article was succinct and did not offer more information than the article in the Brooklyn Eagle. It was actually published several days after his death in Kentucky. It mentioned that he retired about a year ago, and that his ill health for the reason for his pension. He was in Kentucky, at a Trappist Monastery. He was well-known in the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) circles.
Of course I downloaded a pdf file with the article, a pdf file with the whole newspaper page, and a (brief) citation in Chicago style: “Rev. T.J. Kennedy Said to be Dying.” 1901., Oct 05 New York Times (1857-1922), 9. https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/rev-t-j-kennedy-said-be-dying/docview/96159883/se-2. (Further reproduction of New York Times articles is prohibited without permission.)
There is certainly more to do to fill in this ancestor’s story, but the use of the AI tools ChatGPT and Gemini inspired both my creativity and my next steps in the research.
If you have read this blog or heard my talks, you probably know that I have incorporated ChatGPT into my workflow. The basic version of ChatGPT supports a lot of the mundane tasks I do, and in the “Crash Course on ChatGPT and…” book series, I am sharing lessons I learned and the prompts that were helpful.
This time, the tasks go beyond genealogy and into learning a new language. ChatGPT has the potential to be immensely helpful when beginning to learn a new language. It can also explain the intricacies of a language to an English-speaking person in an understandable manner. I was excited about what ChatGPT could do to help the process, and wanted to share it in this brief book, “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Learning A Language.” (A softcover book will follow soon!)
Have you ever wanted a private tutor to help you learn a foreign language? Have you wished for lessons that were customized just for you? While nothing can replace being part of a community of people fluent in a language, ChatGPT can tap into its vast knowledge to provide you with a patient and tireless personal tutor- all you have to do is ask. It can even map out an entire course for you to follow. You can learn using the suggested lessons, then have ChatGPT test you with quizzes and puzzles, or converse with you (in text). It can even generate written content in a different language for you to read or translate. The book will get you started with the skills needed in prompt engineering when learning a new language. In the sections of this book, you will learn how to get an account and start using ChatGPT. Then you will find ideas on how to use ChatGPT to learn a language. Last comes suggested prompts that are for you to use to get started. Throughout the book there will be privacy considerations and potential limitations you might face.
Did you know that OpenAI allows users to generate images with a free account? At the time of writing this blog post, ChatGPT allows the use of DALL·E to generate two images per day with a free account.
All you have to do is ask, by typing in the prompt.
CAVEAT: Always research the ownership of any images generated in an AI tool before you consider publishing them.
PROMPT: Create an image of an airplane flying over art deco buildings
ChatGPT spent a little time and created an image.
At the bottom of the image, ChatGPT gave me some suggestions on what I might ask it to do next.
You can hover your mouse over the image to see the icons for giving feedback, or downloading the image as a WEBP file.
In one experiment ChatGPT showed me that it was creating an image, and then pronounced it complete, but there was no image. So I asked: where is it?
ChatGPT proceeded to ensure that this time I received the image. This second try to get the image to me did not count against my two images per day.
I tried another experiment. I generated two images. When ChatGPT told me “Let me know if you’d like to modify or add anything!” after the second image, I was not sure if that would count toward my daily limit of two images.
So I asked ChatGPT to modify the image, and was given that modified image. Then I received this alert:
Converting WEBP to JPG file format
You might be wondering how to convert a WEBP file to another format. The simplest way in Windows 11 is to open the image using the Photos app.
Select “Edit.”
An alert pops up that the Photos app can not save in WEBP format (which is what I wanted), so select Save Options -> Save as copy.
The dialog box that opened offers a choice of formats in which to save the image.
I chose the .jpg extension to save the image in a JPEG format.
Have you wanted to learn more about Artificial Intelligence?
Recently I gave a talk about Using AI for Genealogy, and shared some of my sources for education about AI. You can find out more about the talk and if you want to learn from a genealogist who is a professor with a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, you might consider having your group book it.
There are many resources available to learn how to get started with generative AI, and some ideas for using it in genealogy. Among them are posts on this blog .
NOTE: DO NOT put any sensitive information into any AI tool.
The first recommendation is a paper that you can download. Genealogists need to learn about prompt engineering to use AI tools effectively. A great paper that offers a catalog of prompt patterns is a good place to start. These prompts presented in the paper are general in nature, but they can be applied to genealogy. The paper is “A Prompt Pattern Catalog to Enhance Prompt Engineering with ChatGPT.” It is an academic paper, and they can look intimidating, but they do not have to be! You can copy-and-paste parts of it into ChatGPT (or another text-to-text AI tool) and ask it to create a summary or explain it. My specific advice is to look at the tables labeled “Contextual Statements” to learn the patterns. I actually copied text from these tables, and combined information about the patterns offered by a generative AI to create a personal cheat sheet.
If you want to dig deeper and understand more, you may want to look beyond genealogical applications and learn about the technology. Understanding what the tools are and how they work might help you be more comfortable with using them and applying them in genealogy.
In its “AI Ready” commitment, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has set a goal to train 2 million people. As part of this commitment, AWS offers free courses about AI. These courses are written for all different levels of knowledge. From the AWS webpage describing the commitment, scroll down to the section “Courses for business and nontechnical audiences” where you can follow the links to register for the courses. A free account is needed. “Introduction to Generative Artificial Intelligence” is a good starting point, with simple and understandable explanations and no formal assessments. (That means no tests!)
If you want to learn in a more structured way, there are online classes available. These are more formal, with structured lessons and activities that you have to turn in. That should not intimidate you, as these courses are designed for beginners who have little or no technical background. The beginner aspect should not dissuade people with more experience, as there is always something to learn in courses like these. I enjoyed the first and simplest course on the list, as well as courses in the series “Generative AU Learning Planning for Decision Makers” and the “Foundations of Prompt Engineering.”
Coursera
Coursera offers “Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT.” It is taught by the professor who wrote the article that I recommended. If you take this course for free, be sure to allocate time for it each week because the course materials are only available to paying participants after the end of the class. I found this to be a very enjoyable course, with the assignments being as simple as using ChatGPT 3.5 to try the patterns from lessons and submitting the prompt and response via a text box.
GALE Courses
Another course that I have begun is “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” on GALE Courses (formerly known as Learn4Life). GALE Courses may be available from your local library website, or from a neighboring county for free by using a library card they issue. For those in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, you will find GALE Courses offered by the Howard County Public Library, so get a library card from them. (At Howard County Public Library this is the link to the description https://education.gale.com/l-howardmain/online-courses/introduction-to-artificial-intelligence/?tab=detail). These are 6-week courses, organized into two lessons per week, and there are discussion boards and ungraded quizzes. In order to obtain a certificate for this course, you have to pass a final containing multiple choice questions that appears to be based on the ungraded, optional quizzes for each lesson. Check on your library’s website for an alphabetical listing of online resources or contact a librarian.
This is a technology course about the science of how a computer can perform tasks that usually require human intelligence. It covers the forms of AI, how AIs learn, AI applications and ethics. It will not be something that you can use immediately for genealogy, but it will give a foundation as we go forward seeing more and more AIs.
No matter how you decide to learn, keep learning!
Let me know how you are learning about AI.
NOTE: I have no affiliation with any of the courses or services in this post.
Thanks for such a warm reception at the Western New York Genealogical Society this past weekend. It was a pleasure to be talking about “Using AI for Genealogy” as part of their year-long fiftieth anniversary celebration, conducted over Zoom. At least fifteen states and two countries were represented in the audience.
The lecture was for people who have not already used AI tools but wanted to learn about them and how to start, AND for those who were already using the tools to share ideas about how to be more effective and expand their use.
It took over a day to obtain the ChatGPT data export that I mentioned during the lecture, but it did arrive later in the afternoon. As a reminder, this data export of all your chats can be requested by clicking on the profile icon on the lower left -> Settings -> Data Controls tab -> Export data. The link allows you to download a zipped file, and when you open it, use an HTML file to access your chats.
I wanted to share some of the great feedback from the audience:
“Fantastic ‘Gen AI 101’ and how to apply it to research!!!”
“Thank you so much! Very clear. Makes me want to go out and try it.!”
“Fantastic program!”
“This was perfectly demonstrated. Thank you!”
“Wow! So much information. Thank you so much.”
“I learned so much. No longer afraid to try it. Thank you.”
” Hope I can find the time to watch this over and over and over!”
You can embark on a captivating exploration at the crossroads of genealogy and artificial intelligence with our lecture on “Using AI in Genealogy,” conducted over Zoom. Presented by a seasoned genealogist who holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering and is the author of “Crash Course on ChatGPT and Genealogy ,” this session promises practical ways to get started using text-to-text artificial intelligence, prompt engineering and other AI tools, with some technological background. AI tools into your genealogical research, along with some technological background about generative AI.
The reasonable pricing ensures accessibility for your group, and participants will receive a thoughtfully curated 5+ page handout. Additionally, we’ve included some optional ‘Homework, but not to turn in’ for those who are ready to delve deeper into the subject. Contact us now to secure an engaging, informative, and educational Zoom lecture for your group.
The reasonable pricing ensures accessibility for your group, and participants will receive a thoughtfully curated 5+ page handout. Additionally, we’ve included some optional ‘Homework, but not to turn in’ for those who are ready to delve deeper into the subject. Contact us now to secure an engaging, informative, and educational Zoom lecture for your group.
