My grandma came to live with us when I was twelve, and brought a box of sepia family photos. I sat at her feet, interrogated her for names and stories, and, thankfully, took notes.
In later years I skulked around record offices and painstakingly sketched my family tree. Now, the robots have taken over and in seconds find a name on a census, or prison records that would have taken hours, if not days, back then. You have to remember that artificial intelligence, despite the name, can be really stupid, and make people stupid too, but used well it can be phenomenal….
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This is an extract from an article published in the Issue 5 – 2025 edition of Reform
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