WolframAlpha for Genealogists

Learn how to harness the power of artificial intelligence to assist in translating, transcribing, and summarizing a variety of genealogy records. A handwritten baptismal record from the 1800s? No problem. A faded newspaper obituary? No problem. We’ll cover the best AI platforms as well as how to craft a solid prompt to get you the results you need.

While artificial intelligence won’t help you find specific records for genealogical research, AI can summarize the record sets you should consult for your search. Learn how to construct effective prompts and queries to return the best information on a record set.

Artificial intelligence can assist in constructing a summary of a document or genealogy record. AI can generate summary text in various formats that you can then add to your research.

While you won’t be able to find genealogy-related records using artificial intelligence, you will be able to use AI to learn more about an ancestor’s “social history.” Social history details how an ancestor lived including where they lived, their occupation, the cost of goods and services, and why they may have migrated to or from a location. Social history “fills in the dash” between an ancestor’s birth date and death date.

While artificial intelligence can effectively translate genealogy documents and records from one language to another, learn how to construct effective prompts, and the pitfalls of using AI for translation.

Artificial intelligence is an amazing resource to help transcribe genealogy documents and records, even those with handwriting! Learn which digital file formats and prompts work best for the best results.

While AI (artificial intelligence) might be the current “hot” buzz word, the fact is that many genealogy vendors and even genealogists have already been using this technology for years. The AI industry is at a cross-roads and within the next five years, it will permeate almost every aspect of business and society. Learn how AI is currently being used to improve the genealogy experience, and whether or not you should seek out other uses of artificial intelligence for your own genealogy research.

More and more genealogy apps and websites, like MyHeritage, 23andMe, and Ancestry, are moving to Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to prevent account hacking and secure user privacy. Some sites like 23andMe and MyHeritage utilize the Google Authenticator App in order to manage your 2FA account and generate the 6-digit code to gain access to your account. You’ll learn how the Two Factor Authentication concept works and see how you can enable it on your accounts to protect your privacy and data.

By now you’ve all heard about 3-2-1 computer backup. Having three copies of your data makes sense, but this relies on knowing where your data is in the first place. Is everything on your computer? What about the external drive in the closet? Or the SD cards in the drawer? Is some of your data in a cloud application, and what happens to that data if you forget to pay the subscription? I call this problem “Data Scatter” and it is the enemy of the 3-2-1 backup model. It’s hard to back up all your data if the primary copies are scattered everywhere. Let’s walk through the problem and we’ll propose a few things you can do to reign in your data and give the 3-2-1 backup model a fighting chance.