Human Interactions with Holocaust Survivor AIs: Current and Future Applications of Visitors’ Interactions with Holocaust Survivor “Holograms”

Abstract

Currently in use at over a dozen museums worldwide, pre-recorded interviews with individual Holocaust survivors incorporate specialized display technology and natural language processing to generate interactive conversations between survivors and visitors. These non-generative AI recordings, created by the USC Shoah Foundation Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) project, are prepared to answer well over 1000 possible questions visitors might ask of them. These current-day interactions with DiT recordings of Holocaust survivors are indebted to a cadre of historians who recognized it was vital to gather the testimony of those who were persecuted. As this paper will demonstrate, for the past eight decades historians, archivists, and technology specialists have worked persistently and creatively to collect, to preserve, and to provide access to the eyewitness testimonies of those who survived the Shoah.

Keywords: Nongenerative AIs, Holocaust Survivors, Oral History Testimony, Holocaust Holograms

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005907