[title]
A new tech-forward installation at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Battery Park City uses non-generative AI systems to allow visitors to have conversations with 10 real Holocaust survivors. Each one a child at the time of the Holocaust, the subjects are now nonagenarians between the ages of 90 and 98, part of the rapidly diminishing last generation of survivors in the world.
Dubbed “Survivor Stories: An Interactive Dialog,” the installation has also been uploaded to the institution's website, available as a web resource for anyone who can't make it in.
According to an official press release, the 10 featured survivors were filmed on-site last summer, “where they answered an extensive list of interview questions developed by partnering institutions [USC Shoah Foundations and USC Libraries] and informed by the questions most frequently posed by students and teachers when meeting with survivors and Holocaust educators.”
Museum-goers will be able to use the large, interactive on-site screen to ask questions and receive corresponding pre-recorded video answers from the subjects, devoid of manipulation. Website users will be able to have a similar experience through their personal screens.
It's important to note that the technology used to develop the installation “does not interpret, imagine, manipulate nor generate new or composite responses,” according to the press release. The AI simply matches and plays back an unedited answer in response to a question.
“Meeting a survivor and hearing from that person a firsthand account of lived experience has a profound impact on young people,” said Dr. Paul Radensky, Senior Director for Education at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in an official statement. “It helps develop their sense of empathy and a deeper level of knowing like no history book can.”
The timing of the installation’s debut is especially significant, as it coincides with Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. This serves as a powerful reminder that the atrocities committed during World War II are still within living memory, underscoring the importance of continuing efforts to ensure we never forget.