Explore the growing role of AI in genealogy with Steve Little.
Learn practical applications, responsible use, and key techniques like data extraction, image analysis, and report generation to enhance family history research.
Full Bio:
Steve Little is the AI Program Director for the National Genealogical Society, the founder of AI Genealogy Insights, and a co-host of The Family History AI Show podcast, and he has lifelong passions for language, technology, and genealogy. Steve completed graduate-level courses in applied linguistics, specializing in natural language processing and computational linguistics, two pillars of today’s large language models of AI; his first career was spent in and around libraries (law, local, university, and state archives) building information systems. Steve traces his deep roots to one Appalachian county, where, by 1820, all 32 of his 3rd-great-grandparents had settled—many even earlier than that. In fact, 60 of his most recent ancestors were born, lived, and died there, in Ashe County, North Carolina. His passion lies in AI & genetic genealogy: with a keen interest in endogamy, pedigree collapse, deciphering multiple relationships, and an insatiable curiosity to explore beneficial uses and current limits of artificial intelligence in genealogy. Beyond genealogy, Steve wears many hats: he’s a husband and a dad, a Methodist pastor, and a Virginian. His hobbies span from bird watching and sky gazing, to chess and film. Additionally, he’s an avid reader, writer, photographer, and regex script hacker (a geeky name for sophisticated find and-replace searches).