FamilySearch Computer-Generated Trees Will Revolutionize Genealogy

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

For more FamilySearch Related videos, check out this list kzbin.info/aero/PLcVx-GSCjcdmTQWonBrjNsalbOCH6ZcWx

[@davidirwin1549]

Great idea - hopefully they can get it set up for family lines from the British Isles and Western Europe as well as Colonial North America !

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

That would be nice.

[@LibertyHomePDX]

Would love to have more in the Philippines especially Batangas and Mindinao.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

That would be great to be sure.

[@karaokeprincezz]

I think this is fascinating! I would LOVE to see Germany, Alsace-Lorraine and The Netherlands.. I know Ireland has had some issues with their records but yes, England, Canada, Norway, Russia, Poland, Galicia, those would be my top areas... but I am just excited that there is a use for it.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

So many places would benefit from this technology.

[@miriamgp9881]

Great news, I'll have to check the Italy CGTs. The portion of my family tree that came from the North of Italy is sadly underdeveloped...

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Good luck. I hope it goes well for you. I also hope FamilySearch will add more CGTs. If people ask for and support their projects, perhaps it will go well.

[@dranet47]

Oh, I hope they do Honduras. My husband's tree is so difficult!

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

That would be so helpful to be sure.

[@janetc2238]

This is great and I wish Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, Belgium and Acadians were covered.

[@lightyagami3492]

Southern US research in general would benefit greatly from this. It's a shame that some many records got destroyed in the civil war. General Sherman was known to burn down every building in every Confederate town he came across taking all the records with them.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

@JC thanks for sharing your wish list.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

@Light Yagami Many places would be served by some of the CGTs. The key is for records to have multiple points of relationships, like Catholic Church records, to create families. Do you know of southern records that fit that bill?

[@Lasch554]

Great video. Thank you

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

My pleasure

[@sheppeyescapee]

I think this would be really helpful for the descendants of enslaved people where the records have the enslaved person named. I've been manually drawing trees for all the enslaved people on the same plantation as my ancestors in Mauritius, but it would be so cool if there was a CGT that could do something like that. I guess that will come with time as they are uploading more records for these countries on Family Search. For my particular family, I found my 5x great-grandmother who was born in Mozambique plus her children and grandchildren all on the same plantation. There were plenty of other families in the same situation. Obviously, I'm biased but I'd love to see the Indian Ocean islands covered as they are often forgotten when it comes to anything slavery related. I'd also love to see more African countries get more resources though as well as the South Asian, East Asian and Southeast Asian countries.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

I don't disagree with the possibilities you share. I think CGTs work best if multiple points of relationships are available. Do the records you mention do that?

[@sheppeyescapee]

The ones I work with, I think, possibly might work? There are often several generations of family all on the same plantation together, with names, dob, where they were born, only missing info tends to be fathers info for the ones I've been looking at. This may be particular to that country/area I'm not sure. But anything that can help is surely a good thing.

[@ladytessca]

interested in the Tasmanian tree as I have collaterals who were transported there...

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Awesome! Good luck.

[@beepbopboop3221]

US census is in there now, but I haven't had any luck pulling up my family clusters.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

I haven't checked this out during my sabbatical. I'll have to take a look

[@debbieroot4618]

Ireland, Czech Republic, Ontario, Canada

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Great locations for consideration to be sure.

[@thenglar]

My favorites would be 3 or 4 counties in northwestern Germany (including Osnabrück, Minden and Northeim).

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Ohhh... Northeim overlaps my family. Let's put in requests for that!

[@thenglar]

@@FamilyHistoryFanatics I thought so, when I heard Hannover and Gillersheim. My 2nd Ggrandfather (Friedrich Steckel, a tailor b. 1845) is from nearby Lindau - since 1974 even in the same township. He lived there until he moved to Osnabrück.

[@tallthinwavy3]

Sweden,Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland and Roma

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Dually noted!

[@paula-666]

It has created many duplicates and provides no sources other than "computer generated tree". Could someone tell me WHERE is this computer getting all this information from? It'd help me when organizing my family tree and checking that it is not adding random people or events I cannot check

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

So far, I haven't see the computer generated trees in the main tree. But I can see when people are adding the computer-generated suggestions and not documenting the sources used. In the CGTs I've experimented with, the sources are attached the profiles and transfer over when you connect the information to the tree. Now, there are a number of profiles that are changing the family tree and not doing their due diligence. As such, Volunteer Project that adds the 1880 census to the Family Tree often doesn't seek out the 1870 census to find the exact same family with the exact same spelling in the exact same location and simply add the 1880 census to that profile. They create new profiles and move on. I wish that would stop, but I'm not sure I have the clout to initiate the request.

[@chanceofrain9535]

This is great but I had to lol at your comment that “it’s not perfect that’s why it’s separated from one world family tree” 😂😭. My tree has so much fiction that people are determined to keep that I’ve quit in frustration

[@glenjones6980]

My great grandfather married three times but dates of marriage and death of spouse result in him appearing with a different spouse in three consecutive census. Thanks to his marriage records, baptism of children and their marriages he is duplicated over 20 times. I merged them all but a week later several new duplicates appeared based on the records again. I merged them all again but when the third lot of duplicates appeared based on the records I gave up. All it needs to confirm they are the same person is the address shown on the census but nobody ever does and just pumps out another duplicate.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

I can see why you'd be frustrated. However, I'd ask you to check out the who added the information to the family tree. If the contributor is FamilySearch in or around 2012/2013, that's the best information that FamilySearch had when the tree we're all contributing to had at that time. It's based on a number of sources, including people who did the best they could with the information they had available before 2012 (and online records). Now, if it's other users, then collaborate with them to come to better conclusions. Every genealogists has made mistakes a time or two. (I know I have and people have called me out for it). And, sometimes what others to be true is incorrect and we have the resources and research to make that clear (I have helped the descendants of my 2nd great-grandmother's second husband realize who the first husband is (Being descended from him helped my case). So the FamilySearch family tree does need people to vet the information to be sure. But FamilySearch is striving not to dump massive new unverified information into the tree until folks can fix what's already there.

[@chanceofrain9535]

@@FamilyHistoryFanatics Some situations I’ve dealt with: I’ve got an ancestor with no known wife. There are no records but family lore on the wife’s name with no documentation and nothing that even points a tiny bit to this woman being his wife. I deleted her name and some person came back in and added it back. I corresponded with them and they agreed that no one knows her name, but “we need to keep her name there as a place holder and because so many people have her listed by that name”. I guess this must be one genealogy technique, huh? It went back and forth, delete, add, delete, add, even though I wrote my explanation on the page. Then I have people who want to keep parents in for children when wills show otherwise or because someone with the same surname lives in the same state, not even close to the right county. I’ve seen my all Appalachian ancestors suddenly appear in Canada! I can’t see what I wrote earlier so hope I’m not being redundant. A little mistake here and there is understandable but so many lines that veered off the path and then continued that way makes me frustrated beyond belief. How do you unhook all of them? I believe in documentation or at least a decent preponderance of a doubt but I’m swimming against the tide! You are very lucky if you aren’t dealing with the same because it drains you so much that you end up throwing in the towel.

[@chanceofrain9535]

I enjoyed my distant relatives a whole lot more when I didn’t have to share a combined family tree with them :0/

[@amandaweber1840]

Danzig and Gdingen would be nice.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Those places would be nice to be sure.

[@TuringPablo]

I´m seeing it in action these days as FS is deploying it in South America and the results are disappointing to say the least. Unfortunately, it looks like FS felt overconfident enough to deploy it not as a parallel tool, but to overwrite the "one-world family tree" built by users. In doing so, they are creating thousands of duplicates as the tool is not smart enough to figure out that a misspelled name is just that and not a different person. Even worse, it's creating wrong family links because, among other things, the tool takes a baptism record but it's not able to read and interpret the names of grandparents and it places the parents of the baptized in the wrong tree. All in all, I feel it's condescending for FS to be deploying an under-tested tool in well-developed genealogies. Needless to say, it is condescending to pretend this is helping "underserved countries".

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

Oh no! That was not my understanding of how this was to be used. If that's the case, I'm not happy about the CGTs creating duplicate profiles.

[@justinrittwage1313]

Not be a downer, but it seems quite terrifying to me because it might replace our jobs and in my opinion I like going and finding the records. If this implemented site-wide it would be quite literally terrifying.

[@cullanpadroclum]

If you've ever a tally used AI you'll feel comfortable in the fact your job won't be replaced.

[@constanza1648]

We will not be replaced in a near future. The limitations of AI are still so big! When I find some records listed by computer, they misread the place as the father, the godfather as the baptized child and so on. And in most cases I cannot see the original document to validate my suspicions. As a person who manually check Italy, Spain and Peru records, I know how hard is to find the information and how time-consuming is to go book by book, page by page... Any help would be fantastic. Even those records with AI-generated problems.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

@Justin Rittwage You're concern is noted. However, notice that the locations chosen are those for underserved locations. Having worked with individuals from these locations, I am supportive of efforts to assist those who have many obstacles to overcome to start exploring their family trees. Additionally, the work has to be validated and additional records added to the foundation to deepen the understanding of the individuals in the tree. With tree building features like this, genealogists can redirect their efforts to the more difficult to use record collections rather than the low hanging fruit. In my opinion, the nature of research can shift but not be eliminated entirely.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

@Constanza I can see AI tools being just that - tools. Human reviews will be necessary. But I appreciate you sharing your experiences with Italy, Spain, and Peru and how invaluable assistance can be in challenging record sets.

[@constanza1648]

​@@FamilyHistoryFanatics You know: it is always better to have something, even if it is not correct or have difficulties. You know how hard it is to find some records with misspellings or different names/surnames and also bad reading (humans also do that), but if you try a wide enough search, having indexed the info is always a help. I think 70 or 80% of my tree is not indexed (any of the records I found). As a perfectionist (and as a copy editor) I really hate misspellings and limitations. But something is better than nothing. I end up guessing some common mistakes (li instead of u, e instead of c...) Experience is a plus in this.

[@jayzeeshawn]

a family tree is never a source.

[@lightyagami3492]

You mean not a primary source. That's correct but it can give you a hint on what primary records to look for. This AI generated tree is based on records but still not 100% correct so you should still manually check all sources.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

An unsourced family tree is highly suspect to be sure.

[@FamilyHistoryFanatics]

@Light Yagami You are correct in your response to Shawn.

[@HermannHartenthaler1]

@@FamilyHistoryFanatics ... but the CGT are sourced!