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