This episode is the 2025 Year in Review. Hosts Steve Little and Mark Thompson examine which predictions hit the mark, and what they missed.
The most important advancements were based on reasoning models.
The advances are mainly generic, not specific to family history. Later parts of the episode make the connection to family history more direct.
Here’s the episode outline:
03:30 Agents, Agents, Everywhere: Deep Research and Agentic Browsers
09:49 Cost of AI Drops Like a Rock: DeepSeek Disrupts the Market
12:26 OpenAI Dethroned: Gemini and Anthropic Rise
18:46 Local Language Models
23:54 AI Invades Social Media
28:24 AI-Enhanced Writing: From Grammar Checking to Ghost Writers
32:30 Family Tree Diagrams: Possible But Not Practical
36:03 Handwriting Recognition: Reasoning Improves Results
38:01 Reasoning Models: 2025’s Most Important Advancement
41:31 Text in Images: A Solved Problem
45:05 Image Restoration: Breakthroughs and Responsibilities
51:02 Vibe Coding: Speaking Software Into Being