My Artificial Ancestry                   

(Above: My artificial great-great-grandfather, Charles Merritt Wilcox, and I discuss, of all things, "relativity." It is always important for genealogy to be an existential experience, even if on some rare occasions it turns out to be simply 'artificial'.)

"And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad....I find it hard to tell you, cause I find it hard to take. When people run in circles, it's a mad, mad world..."

As always, relatively unedited.                

We all know I spend way too much time chasing old ghosts—trying to figure out who is related to whom six-ways-to-Sunday. What can I say? Somebody has to do it, so it might as well be me. I know it gets thick, and too many times I am asking you to slog through text or images you can neither see nor understand. My apologies. The only thing I can say in my defense is that maybe, if  I haven't gleaned any truth in all this genealogical muck-ruck, I've at least provided a modicum of amusement and entertainment, or that I haven't put you to sleep. Hey, if you’re tuning into this latest edition of Ancestral Soap Opera Digest, you are just as hooked as I am on understanding the past and those who came before us. Now, as they say on some TV show somewhere, just take your medicine, right? 😉 Wink.

Or, as I like to say, a la Fox Mulder, "The truth is out there."

Okay, when I'm not subjecting you all to the bewildering prospects of ancestry, I am (excuse my French) dicking around with AI. Yeah, I know. It's like a bad habit. It sort of reminds me of those habits I had during those lost days in the 1980s, but we’d best not go into that. (Some of those old ghosts aren't quite out to pasture just yet.) And yes, I enjoy debating with AI. Specifically, I like to argue with AI genealogically speaking. Well, I’m still me, after all, right?

Say what???

Like any modern-day idiot, I thought I could beat the house at playing genealogical cards. As you might suspect, I’m rarely successful at beating the odds anywhere, especially not with AI on this subject, but the other day I decided to give it a run. The results were fascinating, and I thought I would share them with you.

I. 

So here's the deal: I decided I would ask the Great Gods of Google to look at my family pedigree chart and tell me, "Given all these family lines, who is my earliest known verifiable ancestor?"

Well, again, excuse my French. The algorithm nearly crapped (sh*t) all over itself. Oh no! (It replied) It could not possibly tell me any such thing, as all of this was hidden behind privacy and paywalls. I replied, No problem, giving it the URL to my very public family tree on file with those kind folks and all their many foibles and flaws, in Salt Lake City. Again, Oh, no! "I am a textual model and cannot see this information because you have not provided me a starting point." Apparently, "me" as a starting point didn't work.

I replied, No problem! Here are the names of my grandparents, both paternal and maternal, starting with my mother. 

Can you tell me her earliest known verifiable ancestor(s)?

Sadly, you are seeing my evil side when it comes to addressing my "artificial" ancestry.

There seemed to be a great clunking sound that arose from my laptop. So much so, that I recalled the old line of, "I rose from my bed to see what was the matter..." Smoke began to spew as it churned away at the answer. It fidgeted and fumbled, and I could tell that the Great Gods of Google had not fed their AI beast that day, and that it was hungry to win me over with some clever non-answer or an appropriate mix of leafy greens and word salad. For a while, nothing much happened. The AI seemed to wish it had an "ignore Jeff" function in its processor. Sadly, it appeared to acquiesce. The little spinning wheel spun, then seemed to spin backwards as if it were trying to make up its mind. Finally, it spit out an answer:  

Joseph Clark, Jr. (1642–1726) and Bethia Hubbard (1646–1707)

Okay, interesting choice. I'm certainly familiar with Old Joe and Grandma Beth. They have always seemed like good old Rhode Island stock to me. They're actually quite a foundational pillar in my family tree. While not as exciting as some, they'd hung out with religious reformers like Roger Williams back in the day. I recalled Old Joe and Grandma Beth, too, as ancestors I share in common with my dear friend Patrice (Powell) Reeds-Martin. I liked this couple, too, in that they relayed an as-yet common ancestral line between "me and us" to the very talented actress Amy Adams. I mean, who doesn't want to have an Enchanted Fairy Princess of some sort on Ye Olde Family Tree? She even looks kinda like Patti from back in the day. As a side note, the man (a guy named Lyle Maxson) who walked my mom down the aisle when she married Dad (because her own father couldn't be there) was also, unbeknownst to us and certainly mom at the time (1954), a descendant of Joseph Clark, Jr. and Bethia Hubbard.

Small, small, world. 

Key of Descents: Red Patti, Yellow Lyle, Blue Me, and Green actress Amy Adams 

So look at us. Nothing but a bunch of Grandpa Joe and Granny Beth's kids. (Obviously, Amy cheated when it came to standing in line on gene pool handout day.) I mean, though, who would have thought that a friend of my grandmother's (Lyle), who was also unbeknownst related to her would walk her daughter, my mother, down the aisle, and that her kid (moi) would befriend a girl at school who was also unbeknownst related to all three of them, and all of them related to actress Amy Adams - with the first three related quite closely?

I mean, go figure. You can't make this sh*t up. I swear. (Sorta makes my head hurt, lol.)

Anyway, seems good to me. 🧐

The choice made by the algorithm seemed too easy, though. I mean, Grandpa Joe and Granny Beth? Really? Joe was even a Jr, with a reasonably well-documented line to Joe, Sr., so why him? I had much better family lines, too, easier to identify and (in my estimation) just as easy to trace. 

Maybe the AI has a thing for Amy Adams? 

But I had to wonder...

Was this the easiest AI answer? Had "it" merely plucked "Joe and Beth" alphabetically? I considered my question: "Given all these family lines, who is my earliest known verifiable ancestor?" Had I asked the question the wrong way?

Had I not phrased the question with enough parameters that the algorithm simply plucked the first one it saw? It all felt a bit myopic on the algorithm's part. I wanted to say to it,

Try a little harder, ya wussy.

I suppose at that point I should have asked follow-up questions, or dug my nails in a little deeper into mom's ancestral lines and into the algorithm's cranial matter. (Eeewwww....)  It's so much fun trying to gauge just the right question one should ask or to call the AI out on regarding its sh*t. (And yes, we've established that I have too much time on my hands.)        

But no, I politely gave up on Grandpa Joe and Granny Beth, and yes, even the lovely and talented cousin Amy Adams, and the guy that walked mom down the aisle in '54, but never my old friend Patti, and then I simply moved on.

II.

But I sure as heck wasn't done. Oh, Hell no. I wasn't going to let some cathode ray tube in Silicon Valley win at Wack-a-mole, at least not that day. So, returning to my pedigree chart and returning to the halls of the Great Gods of Google, I inquired again. Oh yes, I was going to be very clever this time. I would be especially easy on the algorithm. I would give it plenty of rope by which to hang itself.

I asked:

"Please name all of the Mayflower ancestors of my paternal great-grandmother, Opal Rae (Young) (Porter) Everett, 1895-1978."

You could almost hear the algorithm sigh with relief. You could hear its processors whirring and churring gleefully as if to say, "Oh, I so got this one." There was a sweet smell of electronic chips and salsa success in the air, and you got the feeling that the AI was so confident in being able to answer me that it was also playing a game of Call of Duty in the background with some fifteen-year-old kid in Koreatown at the same time. You could feel it puff up with pride, as it replied:

"Opal Rae (Young) (Porter) Everett is a descendant of Mayflower passenger Henry Samson."

Say what? I could only reply:

Um, no, she's not.

III.

The AI went on to tell me that I was mistaken.

With an open air of electronic superiority, it typed to me somewhat unequivocally that Opal's Mayflower ancestry to Henry Samson had been successfully proven in the journal Mayflower Descendant, by none other than "genealogist" Jeffery Record. (Indeed, I wondered if I hadn't heard that name somewhere before.)

It told me that I was most certainly wrong.

It went on to say that it had been proven in volumes 64.2 and 65.2 of said journal. Its tone was quite indignant that I should question it. It proceeded to issue a two-page rebuttal of word salad arguments and juggernaut-style addenda, barraging me with the edicts of complying with "one and the same" and the necessity of peer-reviewed "proof standards." The Great Gods at Google had cited the absolute and most definitive sources. 

How dare I?

I could not possibly know what I was talking about. Obviously, the AI had researched even these most prestigious sources:

Not to mention, of course, Mayflower Descendant.

I double-checked the Genealogical Summary for Opal's Dad, George.

Nope, no Henry Samson.

      

        

Above: Opal's daughter, my grandmother, superimposed on the journal Mayflower Descendant

Um, sure?

My great-grandmother, Opal, per AI, was most definitely a descendant of Mayflower passenger Henry Samson. I was amused. I was amazed. I immediately went to some of my old research books and notes to make sure that I had not made a mistake. 

Had I somehow been wrong about "me"?

How could she not be? Per AI, it was after all, "me" who had said so.

IV.

Not to rain on the algorithmic parade here, I had to inform "it" to the contrary. 

I replied to its dear old algorithmic self that this was, at the very least, highly improbable. I inquired: What other sources were there for this ancestry? (I wanted the AI to stew in its own juices.) It was about then that I informed it that "I" was the person "it" was citing as proof. I told "it" that I had written those articles. I told it in no uncertain terms that I was "Jeffery Record" and that I had never proven that Opal Rae (Young) (Porter) Everett was in any way a descendant of Mayflower passenger Henry Samson.    

In a moment of self-doubt, I quickly checked my own records.    

Indeed, had I gone mad?

Thereupon, a great quiet befell the world of HDMI. A great hush fell upon the processors, and all its tangled and tentacled URLs began to quiver.

Then, for the briefest Zeptosecond, nothing moved. It was absolutely still in the Google-verse. 

And then you could smell it. 

You could smell what I like to call the sweet smell of the "artificial artificiality" of it all. You know, like when you go to smell a plastic rose because it only appears to give off a sweet scent? Almost instantly (or after an appropriate interlude or lull in the Google-verse), a small button of e-scent was triggered in some Meta-bat cave sub-basement in, where else, of course, but the Santa Clara Valley. This button triggered the sugary faux-smell of the "patronization-mega-rhythm-core-do-not-delete button." This button, colored in my mind a bright orange, and also known as the "subjugating boot-licker function" (popular in many right-wing neo-fascist groups), immediately kicked in, and, like any skunk mechanism, released its sickly sweet-smelling reply:

"Oh, I am so sorry! Thank you so much for clarifying the source of my information."

Wtf?

It continued: "Based on this new information, I can tell you that Opal Rae (Young) (Porter) Everett was definitely not a descendant of Mayflower passenger Henry Samson.

Again, wtf?

V.

I suppose at that point I should have backed away from "the algo." 

I should have left well enough alone and concluded that I had corrected the situation and advised the "GG of G" that they'd mistaken me for Mayflower descendant "Bart Samson" when I was in fact Jeff Record. (Or, I was this morning when I got up anyway) But we all know I'm a bit of a nutter, and I sure as heck don't back away all that easily. I suppose I was irritated that the AI could be so condescending, and indeed, so dang dumb.

I mean, can't it read your text messages? Can't it nearly read your thoughts? Can't it make videos of the White House East Wing, not demolished, or of airplanes dropping excrement on our fair cities? If it could do all that, why couldn't it track a simple ancestry published in several sources? So I went back in, and this time I asked (yet again) it rather specifically:

"Please name all of the Mayflower ancestors of my paternal great-grandmother, Opal Rae (Young) (Porter) Everett, 1895-1978."

And this is what I got.   

DUDE!!! Wtf??? Four? That's one too many.

(Is it wrong to address AI as "Dude?" I have to wonder.)

So I replied to the AI Google Zen Master:

"First, I have to tell you that Henry Samson is a mistake, then I have to remind you that John Howland, Richard Warren, and Stephen Hopkins have been proven - and now you throw Mayflower passenger William White at me?"

Dude???

Shaking off the feeling of déjà vu and the hegemonic, heterogeneous textual highlights of this AI reply, I pushed all my chips and salsa out onto the electronic table and I spun the Big Genealogical Wheel of Fortune. I had had enough of the AI's silent sycophancy. If it was going to make a blanket statement like that, it was going to show me how or get on with its quiet cacophony as it barked out answers from its kennel in some Silicon Valley garage.

I answered: "So just how is Opal related to Mayflower passenger William White?

And this is what I got: 

Dang! More word salad! I had no idea that the proof standard of "one and the same could be met so easily with the simple phrase of:

                          "[One of his sons: G5...]"

How utterly generic. How utterly bland and non-committal. How succinctly full of baloney. Somewhere, a Mayflower Historian is crying themselves to sleep. Hey, I love an "easy approval" of a supplemental line, but come on, even I can do better than

 "One of his sons..."

Geeeshhhh.

I had no idea I could simply prove my very much unproven Mayflower connection to passenger William White with a phrase like "one of his sons" tacked with modge podge onto some existing proofs and or verifications. How easy was that? At this rate, I will be able to relate myself to absolutely everyone on board that venerable old ship and likely the Cookie Monster and Bela Lugosi, too.

Are you frickin kidding me? Indeed, how lucky am I?

VI.

Okay, let's just say at this point, I quit. I took a couple of Xanax (not really) and went outside to have a smoke (not really) with my dog to get some fresh air (really). I could see that I sure as heck wasn't going to win in this round of Ancestral Artificial Roulette. It just wasn't happening. I thought about arguing against its conclusion that my great-grandmother's lines extended to William White, but really, what was the point? In the end, the AI was only going to be unctuously apologetic or snobbish like some Gilded Age matron. Who needs that? 

You should know that I am not faulting the AI. 

The truth is that I did not, or have not, or cannot ask the questions I want succinctly for it to retrieve or manufacture a correct response. In the first scenario, I somehow made it "too easy" for it to pluck Joseph Clarke, Jr, out of my personal genealogical cosmos. That's on me. In the second (and third) Mayflower scenarios, I didn't give it enough rope, causing it to hang itself up on what short leases of information I did give it.

And the truth is, too is that I am a bit of an asshat who likes to argue with some AI computer playing Call of Duty with a kid in Koreatown on an off day. Go figure, right?

Sometimes, the old ways of research are the best ways.                

Above: Me and my 4,000 times great-grandparents arguing with yesterday's AI about which movie will be Amy Adams' best, about just exactly who will be on the Mayflower, and of course, if there are any cookies left over for grandpa. :)

I do hope that AI will grow. Unlike some, I'm a tenative advocate for it to flourish and expand. I look forward to AI being able to read full-text searches automatically out of seventeenth-century documents and immediately connect them to the applicable genealogical figures, perhaps in place of other vital records. I look forward to it, instantly navigating some unknown connection between an event and a person, and then me being able to find out that it was correct in doing so within a nanosecond.

 And yes, who knows, I may come back one day, and it will have even solved its own query and belief of a genealogical relationship between myself and William White.

Yes!!!

In the meantime, though, I will be glad for my connection to the Cookie Monster, Amy Adams (duh), my old friend Patti, and for a picture of my wife and grandkids on the fridge.

"AI" that sucka! :)

Peace.