How do I actually get involved now? I Feel So Lost With AI Transcriptions Being Absolutely Terrible
I truly miss the community feel of actually looking at the records together. I wish we would have to review what the AI has transcribed before it’s published to maintain our community feel, but it’s like all our hard dedication and the purpose it gave so many of us was taken for granted and continues to be as records with terrible AI transcription keep coming through. I correct them when I can, but it’s just been such a blow to the community we used to have here. I know these changes aren’t new, but I find myself grieving the community we had and the activities we had that let us interact more deeply with the records together where we could track all our work and take pride in it. It’s all gone. It just was eating at me today and I’m wondering if anyone else has this same feeling come up from time to time for them too? Any suggestions to keep the community feel and interaction of actually indexing items?
Answers
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I hear you! Under the old system, I felt like I was finding people. A group of records that I indexed about a year ago from New York, were U S Federal naturalization documents from the 1940-50s, mostly for immigrants from eastern Europe. They really struck me. Many individuals were of the race: "Hebrew" and were born in small villages that no longer exist post WWII. Some were listed as "stateless" in reference to their prior citizenship. They couldn't go home. Here in the USA was their only option. There were thousands of them!!! I miss reading the entire documents.
Having said that, I now believe that AI is the ultimate answer. Finding thousands of names is not near enough. We need to find hundreds of millions of names. We need to train AI to do the work. Right now, I would rate AI as an early first grader. It has a long way to go. The engineers are adapting the code to improve AI function continuously.
In response to the changes, I have chosen to serve as a service missionary in this community. I just started and I have a lot to learn. I still index 4-5 hours a week, trying to show the AI where it messes up. Getting feedback on the progress of the AI might be useful. I'll ask around.
Thank you for all that you do!
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