EP36: Browser Wars Heat Up, What AI Can Learn from AOL, Anthropic's Speedy New AI Model, Simple Path to Better Prompts

EP36: Browser Wars Heat Up, What AI Can Learn from AOL, Anthropic's Speedy New AI Model, Simple Path to Better Prompts

From The Family History AI Show by Mark Thompson and Steve Little

November 3, 2025 · 1h 13m

About this episode

Mark Thompson and Steve Little discuss the impact of new AI browsers on genealogy research and share insights on AI models and prompt writing.

Co-hosts Mark Thompson and Steve Little discuss how new AI browsers are changing how genealogists research. They compare OpenAI's Atlas, Microsoft Edge, Google's Gemini, and Perplexity's Comet, explaining which features help family historians most. The hosts share lessons from the early AOL era that can be applied to the AI era. They also explore Anthropic's new Haiku 4.5, a very fast model that works great for simple tasks like transcription and summarization. Don’t miss this week's Tip of the Week, where Steve shows how AI can help you write better AI prompts. He uses an example for extracting information from draft cards to show how useful this approach can be. In RapidFire, they cover new AI features in spreadsheets, major improvements in transcribing old handwriting, and how Microsoft Copilot's new agent store tries to help you with common tasks. Timestamps: In the News: 01:20 Browser Wars Heat Up: OpenAI Atlas, Edge, and Gemini Compete 16:50 What AI Can Learn from AOL: Avoiding Walled Garden Mistakes 29:10 Anthropic's Haiku 4.5: When Smaller Models Beat Bigger Ones Tip of the Week: 39:50 Using AI to Write Better Prompts for Historical Documents RapidFire: 47:19 AI Makes…

More episodes of The Family History AI Show

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Family History AI Show podcast page.