Loathsome Jargon

An AI Glossary for Genealogists and Family Historians

If you’d like to learn more about why I wrote this glossary of Loathsome Jargon, this January 7 2025 blog post explains.

Jagged Frontier (noun)

Our first bit of jargon comes from Prof. Ethan Mollick of Wharton, who wisely reminds us: “AI is weird.”1 Large language models (LLMs) are amazing, baffling, and often infuriating—a double-edged sword of potential and pitfalls. They make things up (“hallucinations”), give inconsistent answers (“indeterminate”), and remain mysterious even to their creators (“mechanistic interpretability” awaits us later). Above all, they’re unpredictable.

Mollick explains, “AI is weird. No one fully understands its capabilities, failures, or best uses. Some complex tasks (e.g., idea generation) are easy for AI, while simpler ones (e.g., basic math) are hard.” This uneven ability creates a “jagged frontier”—a shifting boundary between what AI excels at and where it fails.2

This frontier isn’t static—it’s amoebic, constantly expanding with each model update. What fails today might succeed tomorrow. For genealogists, this means:

  1. AI’s quirks are normal—don’t despair.
  2. Successes and failures vary even for similar tasks.
  3. Today’s limits often become tomorrow’s breakthroughs.

What can you do now? Track your failures. Not only will it save time by highlighting what doesn’t work, but it creates a ready list of test cases for future models. What fails with GPT-4 might thrive with GPT-5. AI’s frontier is jagged, but it’s growing—map it, and you’ll grow with it.

Jagged Frontier of AI Task Capabilities: An uneven boundary showing tasks AI performs well, struggles with, or fails to complete, adapted by Steve Little from an idea by Ethan Mollick.

This entry was first published in a longer form here: “Loathsome Jargon: An AI Glossary for Genealogists,” https://aigenealogyinsights.com/2025/01/07/loathsome-jargon-an-ai-glossary-for-genealogists/.

Sources:

  1. Ethan Mollick, “Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier,” September 16, 2023, available at https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/centaurs-and-cyborgs-on-the-jagged, accessed January 7, 2025. ↩︎
  2. Ethan Mollick, et al, “Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality” Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Management Unit Working Paper No 24-013, The Wharton School Research Paper, September 15, 2023, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4573321, page 4, accessed January 7, 2025. ↩︎