Full Title: 🔦 Shedding Light on History With AI
Highlights
That’s starting to change: Ancestry.com recently used AI to scrub 38,000 newspaper articles from the 18th and 19th centuries for the names of enslaved people. It’s not the first time genealogists have collected American newspapers to study Black history. But Ancestry’s approach will make these records more accessible to the general population, letting users easily find information with an AI-powered search engine. (View Highlight)
Why it’s important: Genealogists say that while the process can be painful for some, using the new platform could help fill in gaps in family trees, giving families important clues and context about their ancestors. Archivists are also starting to experiment with using conventional chatbots to supplement their research. For example, ChatGPT can help you translate a document written in a foreign language, generate a family tree, or even condense a loved one’s interview transcripts into a cohesive narrative. (View Highlight)
The popular Character AI platform lets you interact with chatbots that have been programmed to have unique personalities and backstories. But users noticed something strange about the app after a recent update. It seemed to them that their AI companions had suddenly gotten “boring.” Their once-thrilling conversations now seemed more repetitive. (View Highlight)
With 2.5 billion monthly visits, OpenAI’s ChatGPT now sees more traffic than Discord and Reddit, and it’s neck-and-neck with Elon Musk’s X. Facebook still holds the lead with 16 billion monthly visits. But its parent company Meta has invested heavily in AI, with Llama-3 becoming one of the industry’s leading models. (View Highlight)
