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Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy
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Ancestors and Algorithms: AI for Genealogy

Author: Brian

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Stuck on a family history brick wall? It's time to add the most powerful tool to your genealogy toolkit: Artificial Intelligence. Welcome to Ancestors and Algorithms, the definitive guide to revolutionizing your family tree research with AI.

Forget the hype and confusion. This isn't just another podcast about AI; this is your hands-on, step-by-step masterclass using AI. Each week, host and researcher Brian demystifies the technology and shows you exactly how to apply AI tools to find ancestors, analyze records, and solve your toughest genealogy puzzles.

We explore the incredible promise of AI while navigating its perils with an honest, practical approach. Learn to use AI as your personal research assistant—not a replacement for your own critical thinking.

Join us to learn how to:

  • Break through brick walls using AI-driven analysis and data correlation.
  • Transcribe old, hard-to-read documents, letters, and census records in minutes.
  • Use ChatGPT, Gemini, and other Generative AI to draft biographies, summarize findings, and organize your research.
  • Analyze DNA matches and historical records to uncover hidden family connections.
  • Master prompts that get you accurate results and avoid AI "hallucinations."
  • Discover the latest AI tech and digital tools for genealogists before anyone else.

Whether you're a beginner genealogist or a seasoned family historian, if you're ready to upgrade your research skills, this podcast is for you. Hit Follow now and turn AI into your ultimate secret weapon for uncovering your ancestry.

62 Episodes
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No record names her parents, and you can still prove them. This episode shows how, step by step, with 5 ordinary records and 3 free AI tools. Every family tree has a woman like Nancy Brockway: a first name, a married surname, and nothing before that. Our case is a composite family built from real 1850s New York record types. Nancy lived in New Berlin, Chenango County, and was born about 1816 in Otsego County. There's no marriage record and no will. There is a Hannah Pettibone, 67, in her 185...
Texas did not register deaths statewide until 1903, so if your ancestor died there in the 1890s, no death certificate was ever created. This week, a county tax roll dated one anyway. Cyril Sebesta came to Fayette County, Texas from Moravia in 1873 and bought eighty acres in 1881. His headstone carries a birth year and nothing else. Three generations left a question mark in the death column. The record that finally narrowed it never mentions his death or his burial. This is a Partial Answer ep...
Most genealogists audit a family tree by hunting for blanks. The dangerous conclusions are the ones that already have a source attached. In this episode, Brian builds a fifteen-person test GEDCOM with five deliberately planted errors, then turns AI loose on it to see how many it catches. Four found. One missed. And the one it missed was the most dangerous error in the file. This is the opposite of how the genealogy world is using AI right now. Everyone is running it forward to find new ance...
A Marine killed at Tarawa in 1943 was declared non-recoverable in 1949, but DNA proved eighty-one years later he had actually been buried within days. It was the paperwork that failed him, not the men who buried him. This episode is for you if you've hit a record whose final-sounding language you never verified, if your family tree has a WWII, Korean, or Vietnam War service member whose fate was never fully confirmed, or if you want to see Gemini Notebook, Claude, and Perplexity with the Com...
A family told the same story about a 1948 move for nearly eighty years. One recorded interview and three AI tools changed that. Effie Napier is eighty-eight, and by her family's account, the last person alive who actually remembers why they left the West Virginia coal fields for Dayton, Ohio. The story everyone told was simple: better money, a fresh start. It's the version repeated at every reunion. Then her grandson sat down with a recorder and one question built from an actual document inst...
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