iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yesterday's post, "Animating Charts, Advent of Agents, and Death of Chatbots," shows how I turned an anonymized family tree into an animated four-generation pedigree chart with Meta's Muse, just by talking to it. Privacy first, then the recipe, and why the age of the chatbot is drawing to a close.

vibegenealogy.ai

Animating Charts, Advent of Agents, and Death of Chatbots

How I animated a pedigree chart with Meta's Muse, and why the age of the chatbot is drawing to a close

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I renamed my Dot "Jane," a nod to the AI in the sci-fi "Ender's Game" series. I wrote about some early experiences with Muse, and how it compares with Grok Bot, Hermes, and OpenClaw, in yesterday's Vibe Genealogy post.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Dots appeared in my ChatGPT web app last night. And this morning there was an update for the desktop app (which accounts for about 95% of my AI usage, along with the Claude desktop app).

vibegenealogy.ai

Animating Charts, Advent of Agents, and Death of Chatbots

How I animated a pedigree chart with Meta's Muse, and why the age of the chatbot is drawing to a close

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yesterday, OpenAI held its annual DevDay, when it makes some of its biggest product releases of the year. Dots, their personal AI agent, was just one of twenty things they made available. The rollout will be gradual.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

By this time in 2027, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of weekly AI users tripled (currently 1.2 billion weekly users at OpenAI alone).

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Muse and Dots, in particular, because they will be in front of billions of people, will likely greatly grow the number of people using these tools. And when Siri finally gets a brain in the next couple of months, Katy, bar the door. (Siri will soon be powered by Google's Gemini.)

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

In addition to memory, a timer, internet access, and computer use, they can connect with about everything else on your computer: email, calendar, local files, and remote accounts like Dropbox, Teams, Slack, Facebook, and Zoom.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

And in addition to an alarm clock, agents have many other tools: they can access the internet, see your computer screen, move/click the mouse, and type on your behalf--this is called "computer use".

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

But agents are like chatbots with an alarm clock; that is, not only can they respond when you chat with them, but they can also "wake up" as if on a schedule or timer to do tasks you give them (like checking your email), perhaps daily, weekly, or every twenty minutes (called a "heartbeat").

vibegenealogy.ai

Animating Charts, Advent of Agents, and Death of Chatbots

How I animated a pedigree chart with Meta's Muse, and why the age of the chatbot is drawing to a close

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What's the difference between an agent and a chatbot? Both are artificial intelligences with large language models powering their illusion of thinking.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

OpenAI introduced Dots yesterday (Tue 29 Sept), joining Meta's Muse and xAI's Grok Bot. Deep geeks have been using similar tools with names like OpenClaw and Hermes, but the learning curve for those was quite steep. Dots, Muse, and Grok Bot, however, are insanely easy to use and scarily powerful.

vibegenealogy.ai

Animating Charts, Advent of Agents, and Death of Chatbots

How I animated a pedigree chart with Meta's Muse, and why the age of the chatbot is drawing to a close

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Personal agents are popping-up everywhere, and they are an order of magnitude more capable than your grandmother's chatbot. 😉

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Yes, of course." That's what Meta's new Muse agent said when I asked whether the family-tree file it preferred, with living people's dates, would be used as training data under Meta's terms. So we used the anonymized file: four generations in ten seconds. How-to in the reply. #genealogy

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If the labs need a narrow antitrust exemption to coordinate on safety—not suppress competition—grant them that. Competition, the marketplace, and product liability are essential guardrails. So is withholding demonstrably unsafe deployments.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The leap from real AI failures to “AI will kill everyone” is doing more work than the evidence supports.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Concerning the “AI will kill us all” headlines breaking into the mainstream media: BE NOT AFRAID. The best way out is straight through; let’s not wallow in the messy middle of the Singularity. Apologies to Robert Frost. www.semafor.com/article/09/1...

semafor.com

View: We have nothing to fear but AI fear itself

Blindly believing advocates who say AI could kill us means missing some real risks, like economic or societal destabilization as AI transforms how people work and communicate.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

The map is more than a keepsake; it surfaced a possible link between two ancestor families through land near the same creek. Geography as evidence. Jason Duncan shows how he built it: webjmd.substack.com/p/where-did-... This is the way.

webjmd.substack.com

Where Did I Come From?

Creating a new map of my ancestors' birthplaces

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

This is what "vibe genealogy" looks like. A family historian fed his tree to Claude Code and got what genealogy software never gave him: a map of 8 generations of ancestral birthplaces, every parent-to-child move drawn as a line. Nearly all born within 40 miles of Mount Airy, NC. 🧵

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I am not interested in making Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 fight for a trophy. I want one to analyze the genealogical record and the other to find the holes—using the same free GRA v9.2 methodology—before I return to the actual evidence and decide. Desktop setup + workflow guide in the reply.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

The verdict I pre-registered held: promising, but unproven. The method beats the model, and the method is yours to keep. Full story + six things to try before midnight: vibegenealogy.ai/p/claude-fab...

vibegenealogy.ai

Claude Fable 5: Use It, or Lose It

Free access to Claude's best model ends at midnight Pacific tonight. Here's what it did for my family history last night, and what it can do for yours today.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Free Fable 5 access ends TONIGHT, 11:59:59 PM Pacific. Last night, on vacation, I watched two rival AIs grade each other's genealogy homework: 155 records, a sealed answer key, bars set before I peeked. Zero invented facts. Four real bugs caught. One honest failing grade.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

For folks who are already Claude subscribers, they should **definitely** take advantage of the highly subsidized Fable 5 access through Tue 7 Jul; the other group that should think hard about it are those with solid AI skills, no plans for the holiday weekend, and $20 burning a hole in their pocket.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Need help? Point Fable or any model at vibegenealogy.ai/p/fables-bac... and prompt: Explain this to me as if I were: 1) a fifth grader, 2) a tenth grader, and 3) a curious adult with no prior knowledge of these things, in about 125 words per level. Or! Copy-paste this whole comment to the chatbot.

vibegenealogy.ai

Fable's Back for a Week. Here's How to Actually Use It.

The most capable AI Anthropic makes is included on most paid plans through July 7, then it goes metered. Don't waste it on chat.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

The rule: use the frontier model for the hard part — planning, judgment, orchestration — and route the routine work down to cheaper models. Guide + prompt pack: vibegenealogy.ai/p/fables-bac...

vibegenealogy.ai

Fable's Back for a Week. Here's How to Actually Use It.

The most capable AI Anthropic makes is included on most paid plans through July 7, then it goes metered. Don't waste it on chat.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Claude Fable 5 is back — but only included through July 7, then it goes metered. Don't waste it on chat. I published a working guide: how to actually spend your Fable week on genealogy — copy-ready prompts, a live demo on my own family records, and a try-it-yourself exercise. 🧵

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

In 3 days it built a sourced 1872 county map (8 AI agents, 4 adversarial fact-checkers), read a draft card into evidence at "Probable, not Proved," and ran an overnight extraction of 1,000+ findings. The real lesson: think bigger. vibegenealogy.ai/p/fable-5-th...

vibegenealogy.ai

Fable 5: The Night Agent

Three days with a frontier model, and a glimpse of how much bigger we should be thinking.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Claude Fable 5 is coming back — Anthropic says the export controls are lifted and access returns tomorrow. I had it for three days in June and put it to real genealogical work. Just published a field report on what a frontier model can build for family history. 🧵

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Four elements of an extortion are on the record: coercive pressure, property worth hundreds of billions, a public demand, compelled compliance. Two aren't: intent, and the link. The full breakdown: vibegenealogy.ai/p/trump-ai-s...

vibegenealogy.ai

Anatomy of a Shakedown

Pressure converting into property: Washington flipped the kill switch on a frontier AI model while asking the industry to hand over a piece.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Anatomy of a Shakedown. Trump floated taking "pieces" of AI companies. Days later, a national-security order forced Anthropic to switch off its two most powerful models worldwide—even its own foreign-national staff—on 90 minutes' notice. Security, or leverage?

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Trump did not merely endorse AI regulation. He publicly discussed taking “pieces” from AI companies so the public could become “very rich,” framed it as a “partnership with the American public,” then said he expected top AI executives to agree to “giving back.”

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Trump muses about the US taking ownership stakes in AI firms. Days later, a national-security export order forces Anthropic to kill its two top models—no explanation matching the breadth. Stated reason: security. Real result: leverage. A chokehold. The precedent should alarm everyone.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

2/ The shutdown even barred Anthropic's non-citizen US-based employees, so the company disabled the models for everyone. No public reason matches that breadth—while the same government openly seeks ownership stakes in AI. The precedent should alarm every firm, and every citizen.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

1/ Trump muses that Washington should take ownership stakes in AI firms. Days later, a national-security export order forces Anthropic to switch off its two most powerful models. Stated reason: security. Real result: leverage. A chokehold.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

The era of the "free" AI lunch is ending. For 3 years, VC covered the gap between your $20 subscription and what frontier models cost. Exhibit A: Claude Fable 5 goes pay-per-token after June 22 — $10/M in, $50/M out. The new skill isn't using AI. It's knowing when the expensive model is worth it.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Encyclicals do not fall from heaven onto a satin pillow (though they may be intended to be read by some that way), and this one will receive some critical feedback--here is some of the first, from someone I follow somewhat respectfully: x.com/deanwball/st...

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

AI is not neutral. That's the central claim in Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical: every technology carries the values of those who build it, fund it, regulate it, and use it. One of the most consequential AI statements we'll see this year — and it didn't come from Silicon Valley.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Fifth grader, tenth grader, curious adult—one AI decoding my thoughts about which AI to use. Pleasantly recursive. And it ends on a question I can't fully answer: who actually wrote that? vibegenealogy.ai/p/codex-clau...

vibegenealogy.ai

Codex, Claude Code, Antigravity

I shared my take on the AI super-app wars—Codex, Claude, Antigravity—then had Claude explain my own words back to me three ways: using one AI to decode my thoughts about which AI to use.

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

I switched my main AI app from Antigravity to Codex six weeks ago. Today I'm ~60% Codex, 30% Claude Code, 10% Antigravity—and loyal to none of them. Don't fall in love with your chatbot. Then I had Claude explain my own words back to me three ways. It got weird. 🧵

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

For context, the theory paper behind the study: Shan & Luther argue AI for genealogy should support emotions, not just facts. CSCW 2025. crowd.cs.vt.edu/wp-content/u...

crowd.cs.vt.edu

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

If you have two weeks and a little curiosity about where AI fits into family history, this is worth your time. Approved by Virginia Tech IRB (#26-322). Interest survey: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... (2/2)

docs.google.com

Genealogy Study Recruiting Survey

This research study aims to explore how AI can help amateur genealogists with their research. Please provide some information about yourself and your genealogy/family history research experience. We w...

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Met Kurt Luther (Virginia Tech, creator of Civil War Photo Sleuth) and his PhD student last week — came away impressed. Their lab is recruiting genealogy hobbyists for a 2-week remote study of Genet, their AI browser extension. (1/2)

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Ep 41 is live: "More Is Not the Same as Better" 400x more DNA data. 2.3M searchable pension pages. Wikipedia bans AI content 44-2. And an interview with FamilyTreeDNA's David Vance that's one of the best we've done this year. podcast.show/3738800/epis...

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Steve Little @digitalarchivst.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

In 2023, AI could handle a 4-minute task. By 2026, 12 hours. That's the METR time-horizon benchmark — and the curve is nearly vertical. One metric, not the whole story, but hard to look away from. And new models coming soon.

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