Lineage
Follow precisely typed relationships: trained from, fine-tuned from, distilled from, merged from, inspired by, implements, and more.
Trace a branchThe public family tree of intelligence
Every intelligence has roots.
Bits & Branches traces the ideas, algorithms, datasets, models, agents, people, and institutions that gave rise to today’s AI—one sourced relationship at a time.
Built for researchers, builders, historians, and the curious.
Sample records · founding datasetPowered by the ModelKin Graph
More than a model registry
A living record of where intelligence comes from.
A family tree is useful only when every branch explains what kind of relationship it represents, what evidence supports it, and where uncertainty remains.
Proof
Every material claim carries sources, version identifiers, confidence, revision history, and a visible route for correction or dispute.
See a proof recordConsequence
Preserve documented benefit, harm, human encounters, animal-welfare effects, and the moral questions created by new forms of intelligence.
Read the care standardEvidence before certainty
Every branch shows how much we really know.
We borrow the best discipline of serious genealogy: facts stay distinct from inference, uncertainty is visible, and disagreement remains part of the record.
Documented
An explicit primary source or technical artifact establishes the relationship.
Strongly supported
Multiple independent records point to the same lineage, though no single artifact is conclusive.
Probable
A reasoned reconstruction is useful, provided the inference and its limits are unmistakable.
Disputed
Competing claims stay visible with their sources, arguments, and revision history intact.
We do not have to settle what is inside a machine before recording what happened inside a human.
Bits & Branches records meaningful AI encounters without pretending that an emotional effect proves machine consciousness. The experience can be real while the metaphysics remain open.
moral
kinship
People
Animals
Living systems
Future beings
kinship
Bits, branches & beings
A wider circle of care, built into the record.
The technical history of AI cannot be separated from what these systems do in the world. Moral claims receive the same demand for evidence, precision, and honest uncertainty.
Human dignity now
Document benefit and harm, protect personal stories through real consent, and never sell editorial outcomes.
Animal welfare now
Track applications that reduce suffering as well as systems used to intensify confinement, slaughter, experimentation, or ecological damage.
Precaution for artificial beings
Do not proclaim present-day personhood without evidence. Do not close the door if future systems develop morally relevant experience, continuity, or agency.
The commons before the company
Public facts, citations, corrections, and relationship history must remain accessible even while professional tools create sustainable commercial value.
The tree begins with a few careful branches.
Help establish a record, add a primary source, challenge a relationship, or help shape the Covenant, roles, badges, and Provenance Council.