Genealogy: The Slippery Slope to Robot Domination

Long ago---the 1970s---genealogy was done by looking through family archives and visiting cemeteries in foreign countries linking deceased relatives. Genealogists could only dream of an easier way. Today the old tactics are still valuable, but searching enormous databases of extracted data from immigration records, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and other legal documents is much more efficient. Computers have not yet been taught to make the connections between names and records that humans can, but they will be. To us that doesn't seem as remote or ridiculous as the idea of searchable databases did to people in the 70s. When computers can do that work, people will not be surprised and will return to looking through cemeteries trying to make the most difficult links. Well, until we find a way to make computers do that too. "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."