AI Agents and Family Relations Among the 12

Stephen C

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The latest big AI breakthrough is AI agents, or AI bots that can do the kind of mundane Googling-and-fill-out-spreadsheet work that interns typically do. Like all AI you have to check it but still, this is in the category of possibly reducing mundanities so that people can focus on more creative work.

I switched back to GPT after apostatizing to Google Gemini for a few months, so I have access to a certain number of these agent requests every month. To test it out, I had it do something I’ve had my list for a while. My prompt:

I want you to go through this list of members of the 12, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Quorum_of_the_Twelve_Apostles_(LDS_Church), navigate to the Wikipedia page for each member of the quorum of the 12 (past and present), and make a spreadsheet that shows which members of the 12 throughout history were related to other high church leaders.

After the first iteration I added some detail, asking it to add a start and end date, etc.

At the bottom of this post is the actual data. A few things.

  • I had it create a chart of % of the Q12 with some relations. I spot-checked a few locations that were born out (the little bumps are from years where you had more than 12 people in the Q12 because of people passing away or being moved around, so the denominators shifted a little), and it passes the smell test, but I didn’t do the complete math, so caveat emptor. That being said, it’s clear what the trend is regardless of the little inaccuracies. Also, with the death of Elder Ballard and the calling of Elder Kearon, for the first time ever the Church has a Q12 where no member is a close relation of any other member, past or present. Once President Eyring passes, assuming his replacement isn’t a close relation of another Church leader, it will be the first time the FP+Q12 has no close family ties to other past Church leaders. (Close family, I’m not counting people who are the umpteenth thousandth descendant of Heber C. Kimball).

  • In terms of why, I do think that we are (thankfully) moving away from the spiritual royalty idea in the Church. Also, the Church is so much, much larger there are just more options, so the chance that the person being called happens to be the close relative of another leader is quite a bit smaller.

 

  • It’s not perfect obviously. Specifically, in the first iteration it missed John W. Taylor, and in the latest iteration it missed Henry B. Eyring being the nephew of Spencer W. Kimball and Willard Richard being the cousin of Brigham Young. There may have been others that I’m not aware of.

 

  • It took my request very literally with ending dates. For example, President Monson’s leaving date was set at 1985, the year he was put into the First Presidency, so this was a case when I should have specified Quorum of 12 AND First Presidency.

 

  • The spreadsheet the GPT agent put together after crawling through Wikipedia
Name StartYear EndYear RelatedTo Relationship
Thomas B. Marsh 1835 1839
John F. Boynton 1835 1837
Orson Pratt 1835 1881 Parley P. Pratt Brother
William Smith 1835 1845 Joseph Smith Brother
Luke Johnson 1835 1837 Lyman E. Johnson Brother
Parley P. Pratt 1835 1857 Orson Pratt Brother
Lyman E. Johnson 1835 1837 Luke Johnson Brother
Orson Hyde 1835 1878
Heber C. Kimball 1835 1847 Orson F. Whitney Grandfather
Brigham Young 1835 1847 Brigham Young Jr. Father
David W. Patten 1835 1838
William E. McLellin 1835 1838
John E. Page 1838 1846
John Taylor 1838 1880 John W. Taylor Father
George A. Smith 1839 1868 Joseph Smith Cousin
Wilford Woodruff 1839 1889 Abraham O. Woodruff Father
Willard Richards 1840 1847
Lyman Wight 1841 1848
Amasa Lyman 1842 1867 Francis M. Lyman Father
Ezra T. Benson 1846 1869 Ezra Taft Benson Great-grandfather
Erastus Snow 1849 1888
Charles C. Rich 1849 1883
Lorenzo Snow 1849 1898 Joseph Smith Brother-in-law
Franklin D. Richards 1849 1899 George F. Richards Father
George Q. Cannon 1860 1889 Abraham H. Cannon Father
Joseph F. Smith 1866 1880 Hyrum M. Smith & Joseph Fielding Smith Father (two sons)
Brigham Young Jr. 1868 1903 Brigham Young Son
Albert Carrington 1870 1885
Moses Thatcher 1879 1896
Francis M. Lyman 1880 1916 Amasa Lyman Son
John Henry Smith 1880 1910 George A. Smith Son
George Teasdale 1882 1907
Heber J. Grant 1882 1918 Jedidiah Grant First Presidency, I added this one.
John W. Taylor 1884 1905 John Taylor Son
Marriner W. Merrill 1889 1906 Joseph F. Merrill Father
Anthon H. Lund 1889 1901
Abraham H. Cannon 1889 1896 George Q. Cannon Son
Abraham O. Woodruff 1897 1904 Wilford Woodruff Son
Matthias F. Cowley 1897 1905 Matthew Cowley Father
Rudger Clawson 1898 1943
Reed Smoot 1900 1941
Hyrum M. Smith 1901 1918 Joseph F. Smith Son
George Albert Smith 1903 1945 John Henry Smith Son
Charles W. Penrose 1904 1911
George F. Richards 1906 1950 Franklin D. Richards Son
Orson F. Whitney 1906 1931 Heber C. Kimball Grandson
David O. McKay 1906 1934
Anthony W. Ivins 1907 1921
Joseph Fielding Smith 1910 1970 Joseph F. Smith Son
James E. Talmage 1911 1933
Stephen L Richards 1917 1951 Willard Richards Grandson
Richard R. Lyman 1918 1943 Francis M. Lyman Son
Melvin J. Ballard 1919 1939 M. Russell Ballard Grandfather
John A. Widtsoe 1921 1952
Joseph F. Merrill 1931 1952 Marriner W. Merrill Son
Charles A. Callis 1933 1947
J. Reuben Clark 1934 1934
Alonzo A. Hinckley 1934 1936 Gordon B. Hinckley Uncle
Albert E. Bowen 1937 1953
Sylvester Q. Cannon 1938 1943 George Q. Cannon Son
Harold B. Lee 1941 1970
Spencer W. Kimball 1943 1973 Heber C. Kimball Grandson (also cousin to Orson F. Whitney & J. Reuben Clark)
Ezra Taft Benson 1943 1985 Ezra T. Benson Great-grandson
Mark E. Petersen 1944 1984
Matthew Cowley 1945 1953 Matthias F. Cowley Son
Henry D. Moyle 1947 1959
Delbert L. Stapley 1950 1978
Marion G. Romney 1951 1985
LeGrand Richards 1952 1983 George F. Richards Son
Adam S. Bennion 1953 1958
Richard L. Evans 1953 1971
George Q. Morris 1954 1962
Hugh B. Brown 1955 1970
Howard W. Hunter 1959 1989
N. Eldon Tanner 1962 1963 Hugh B. Brown nephew
Thomas S. Monson 1963 1985
Boyd K. Packer 1970 2015
Marvin J. Ashton 1971 1994
Bruce R. McConkie 1972 1985 Joseph Fielding Smith son-in-law
L. Tom Perry 1974 2015
David B. Haight 1976 1996
James E. Faust 1978 1995
Neal A. Maxwell 1981 2004
Russell M. Nelson 1984 2018
Dallin H. Oaks 1984
M. Russell Ballard 1985 2023 Melvin J. Ballard Grandson
Joseph B. Wirthlin 1986 2008
Richard G. Scott 1988 2015
Jeffrey R. Holland 1994
Robert D. Hales 1994 2017
Henry B. Eyring 1995
David A. Bednar 2004
Dieter F. Uchtdorf 2004
Quentin L. Cook 2007
D. Todd Christofferson 2008
Neil L. Andersen 2009
Gary E. Stevenson 2015
Dale G. Renlund 2015
Ronald A. Rasband 2015
Gerrit W. Gong 2018
Ulisses Soares 2018
Patrick Kearon 2023

 

Comments

8 responses to “AI Agents and Family Relations Among the 12”

  1. Critchlow

    Quentin L. Cook is a two time great grandson of Pres. Heber C. Kimball, which would make him a relative by marriage to Pres. Eyring. Pres. James E. Faust is a descendant of Francis M. Lyman and his father Amasa M. Lyman

  2. Stephen C.

    Sure, but I noted that I’m just dealing with close relations (one or two degrees), since if we get into great-grandchildren then half of Utah qualifies (not a scientific estimate).

  3. Stephen C.

    Although I’m seeing now that the AI picked up a couple great-grandchildren relations, so I must not have been clear enough in the prompt.

  4. DaveW

    1. GB Hinckley doesn’t seem to be on your list of apostles.
    2. JB Wirthlin is the cousin of GB Hinckley, and also the son of JL Wirthlin who was the presiding bishop for the church. Presiding bishop doesn’t count if you’re focused on exclusively apostle relationships, but if the broader idea is to look at high ranking church positions, presiding bishop probably should count, IMO.
    3. It feels weird to count someone as ‘related to another apostle’ when that other apostle is a descendent of theirs. Yes, they are obviously related, but it’s not like anyone was walking around thinking, “George F Richards probably only got called as an apostle because he’s LeGrand Richard’s dad.” These reciprocal relationships are not consistently applied in your list; John Taylor is listed as John W Taylor’s father, but Hugh B Brown is not listed as Tanner’s uncle. Additionally, using forward looking relationships means that the results from the past can change in the future. If Richard L Evan’s grandson is the next apostle called, suddenly the percentage of apostles related to another apostle back in the 1950s just went up!

  5. Stephen C.

    DaveW: All of that is fair.

  6. John Mansfield

    I don’t get the point of counting grandfathers and uncles, such as Ezra T. Benson and Alonzo Hinckley. When they were called their grandsons and nephews were decades away from being church leaders themselves. The percentage of relatedness for earlier quorums will go down if you don’t count those relationships, and I don’t see a reason for counting them when making a comparison with more recent quorums. Maybe grandsons and nephews of current apostles will seventy years from now will raise the current quorum’s percentage too.

  7. Stephen C.

    The point isn’t necessarily a nepotistic one, where their GA relative directly called them to that position, but rather that they could have been shortlisted because they belonged to a blue blood family. But yes, by counting it in both directions I’m essentially double counting every tie, that’s fair.

  8. John Taber

    You can look at the apostles called in 1943 two different ways: They were both stake presidents in what were then outlying areas of the Church. They were named Kimball and Benson, though.

    The way I look at it is that, sure, some descendants of General Authorities have also been called, but also have many others haven’t. This is especially the case with the likes of polygamist leaders who had dozens of children; Heber C. Kimball had fifty-two sons.

    There is something to be said for heritage, though. What I think Boyd K. Packer meant with his term “believing blood” was parental example of having testimonies and being involved in the Church being passed down. I can certainly see patterns of this with my ancestors, but being the third great-grandson of a counselor in the First Presidency (who’s also my namesake) doesn’t entitle me to anything.

    For a long time, living in Utah meant a much greater likeness of being called to auxiliary presidencies and boards. Susan Winder Tanner and Susan Buhler Taber (my late mother) are second cousins, but they made their mark in very different ways. This was in large part based on where they spent their adult lives.

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