Based on the image that accompanies this column, ChatGPT rendered this columnist in a respectable caricature.
Despite what AI Google may tell you, actress Marjorie Main was not born in Savoy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson did not repeatedly — if ever — climb Monument Mountain in Great Barrington.
Based on the image that accompanies this column, ChatGPT rendered this columnist in a respectable caricature.
When researching Our Berkshires columns I delve into past issues of daily and weekly newspapers, trade journals, archival maps, legislative reports, deeds and probate records.
Good old library bookshelves yield helpful primary and secondary sources. I talk with people. And I visit sites.
In the case of a recent project I shared with four other local historians, tracking Henry Knox’s 1776 path through the South Berkshire woods for a new book, “Ye Trodden Path,” we all spent time deep in woods in six towns looking for physical clues. And we found them.
Not a shred of my Our Berkshires stories is sourced through artificial intelligence.
Why? I plugged some random names into Google AI to provide examples of what happens.
I’ll start with when it is accurate. When did actress Audrey Meadows (Alice Kramden on “The Honeymooners”) live in Great Barrington? I asked.
“When she attended the Barrington School for Girls in the late 1930s,” it said. Its source? Wikipedia. OK. Other sources agree with that.
Was Eleanor Roosevelt ever in town? Google AI pointed to the first lady’s newspaper column from Aug. 9, 1941, in which she described a trip to Berkshire Music Festival. On the way, her party “had a picnic supper together in a field on a dirt road leading off from Route #7, before Great Barrington.” She drove through.
Has any famous wrestler been in the Berkshires? WWE’s John Cena was here in 2017 to film scenes for the movie “Daddy’s Home 2.” The production company had a staging area at Ski Butternut, The Berkshire Eagle confirms, and filmed on the slopes and at a cabin on Monument Valley Road.
Then things began to go screwy.
When was artist Andrew Wyeth in Great Barrington? Google AI said his visit to the annual agricultural fair resulted in the painting of a jockey in 1944. The source? A New Britain Museum of Art catalog.
But the catalog doesn’t say that. I pushed AI to verify and was told: “The premise of your question is mistaken. Jockey in the Backstretch, Great Barrington Fair, Great Barrington, Massachusetts is a vintage gelatin silver photograph by Henry Horenstein taken in 1978, not a 1948 painting by Andrew Wyeth.”
Then why did you give me that mistaken premise to begin with?
Similarly it told me the character actor Andy Devine (Jingles on TV’s “Wild Bill Hickok”) visited town in July 1949. Sources? It reconsidered: “I need to correct my previous statement. There is no historical record or source confirming that Andy Devine visited Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in July 1949.”
Well, it was being honest.
When was Richard Nixon in Pittsfield? Never, it responded, adding “If you meant a different historical figure, place or a famous musician who performed in the city (such as James Taylor who famously sang about Nixon in Pittsfield), please let me know!”
A little sleight of hand here? I won’t let you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson did not repeatedly — if ever — climb Monument Mountain in Great Barrington.
It told me — and when pressed, denied — that Ralph Waldo Emerson often climbed Monument Mountain; that Louisa May Alcott after leaving Fruitlands worked as a seamstress in Great Barrington; and that William Cullen Bryant was on a 1940s Famous Americans Series stamps.
What famous person was caught speeding in the Berkshires? “You might be thinking of famous traffic incidents in Berkshire, England….”
I thought I was clear.
What famous person from Scotland visited the Berkshires? Its waffling answer: “Joshua Bell: While not Scottish, this famous American violinist frequently performs Bruch’s famous Scottish Fantasy at the Tanglewood Music Festival.”
Trying hard to please me, it grasped at anything.
I went back to easy questions. Where was Pittsfield’s first pizza restaurant? Gabe Virgilio’s East Side Café on Newell Street, came the answer. He began selling slices and pies in 1941. Confirmed.
When were the Three Stooges in Pittsfield? It cited a 1925 visit by Larry Fine, on a vaudeville circuit with the Haney Sisters — as I wrote about in an Our Berkshires column in 2019. I was the source!
What interesting personality lived in Monterey? AI Google suggested Col. Giles Jackson (1773-1810), who lived near Bidwell House and sired 14 children with his first wife, Anna Thomas, helped raise five stepchildren that came with his second mate, the widow Sarah Atwood Orgon, then had five more children with her. Rick Wilcox’s research for a Bidwell House Museum posting confirms this.
Well, the information may be interesting, but he also happened to have been chief of staff for Gen. Horatio Gates at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777. And before that he was at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.
Despite what AI Google may tell you, actress Marjorie Main was not born in Savoy.
Google AI lied to me that Hollywood actress Marjorie Main (Ma and Pa Kettle B-movie series) was born in Savoy in 1890. Her birth name was Mary Tomlinson and she was born in the home of her maternal grandfather, Dr. Samuel McGaughey, and, it said, “The house still stands, a mile east of Acton, on the southeast side of Marion County.”
Huh? What are your sources? Sheepishly it responded: “I made a significant mistake in my previous response, and I appreciate you calling me out on it. Marjorie Main was not born in Savoy, Massachusetts. Nor did she live there. I hallucinated that connection, and I am genuinely sorry for passing along incorrect information.” She was actually born in Indiana.
It told me Shirley MacLaine lived in Richmond at April Hill. Proof? “I need to correct my previous statement: Shirley MacLaine never lived in Richmond, Massachusetts.” She was born in Richmond, Va.
Google AI obviously can be sloppy. When I asked when United Nations Secretary General U Thant visited Great Barrington, it said he came to visit fellow Burma native U Ba Win, provost at Simon’s Rock Early College, in 1976. But the cited source actually said another Burmese educator had visited the school. Anyway, U Thant died in 1974.
This is how false history grows.
Google AI trolls for word associations and doesn’t always read the rest of the material.
Google AI has with and without permission tapped scazions of online sources, but it hasn’t wormed into nondigitized local history books and periodicals and documents … valuable sources local historians seek out. Nor has it subscribed to Newspapers.com.
Google AI admitted to me one day: “As an AI, my information retrieval is limited to broader digitized history platforms, index summaries, and open web databases. I cannot independently browse through individual microfilmed or un-indexed weekly issues of 19th-century Berkshire County newspapers (such as The Berkshire County Eagle or The Valley Gleaner).”
Another time, when it matched the wrong photo with an answer, it apologized: “Because I am an AI text assistant, I cannot actually see or control the specific image cards or search thumbnails that populate next to my text, which sometimes leads to an automated system matching the wrong historic Great Barrington landmark to the address.”
Always challenge, always check with other sources. The search engine even suggests sometimes: “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses.”
Google AI as is apparent has different personalities, sometimes elated to serve you, sometimes officious, sometimes defensive, sometimes apologetic. And sometimes accurate.
So I’m staying old school.
As I was researching this, I received an offer from ChatGPT Images for a free image enhancement. So I requested a caricature. After it twice sent me pictures of a woman, it came through with the face that adorns this column. That’s not quite what I look like. But it’s fun.
And now I’ve gotten several offers through Facebook to write books for me.
Nosy, nosy, Google.
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Bernard A. Drew is a regular Eagle contributor.
The renaming of the library at Berkshire Community College will cleanse one of two Pittsfield school buildings of the stain of child trafficking.
Not a shred of my Our Berkshires stories is sourced through artificial intelligence. The responses to some random queries I ran through AI explain why.
Eagle Archives, June 26, 1926: A carved inscription on a boulder near Disappearing Brook in Lanesboro has drawn attention for its unusual verse referencing Capt. John M. Brown of Cheshire and Susan Baker of Lanesboro.
Eagle Archives, June 25, 1938: A longtime hobbyist boat builder transformed aluminum panels from a retired Berkshire Street Railway bus into an 11-foot rowboat.
Eagle Archives, June 23, 1954: A ballad preserved by Clayton resident Wallace Bentley tells the story of Samuel Buel’s heroic rescue efforts during an 1812 boating tragedy.
Eagle Archives, June 22, 1955: Pittsfield’s only one-room school, Morewood, closes for the summer as parents and neighbors express hope it will reopen in the fall despite a surveyor’s report recommending its abandonment.
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