00:00This school class is about to meet a digital representation of a Holocaust survivor in
00:06their VR headsets.
00:07They can ask the hologram of Manfred Goldberg questions.
00:12One in a million survivors who had both parents alive.
00:17As a child, Manfred Goldberg was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.
00:22In virtual reality, the students can visit the Stutthof concentration camp that Manfred
00:27Goldberg speaks about at Explore Castle, where he lived.
00:32My favorite part was using the VR headsets and how we got to see the spaces because it was really
00:37cool.
00:37And a real victim that has gone through the events, obviously, that occurred, telling you his real experiences.
00:44It's amazing.
00:45Holograms offer a different access to history than films.
00:49What the holograms do is that they enable audiences to be very active in the interaction.
00:56And so they have to really delve into themselves to make sense of this encounter.
01:02They have to formulate questions about the Holocaust that would make sense.
01:07They have to show an interest in another person's life.
01:11Years ago, Manfred Goldberg answered 1,000 questions about his life for the Testimony 360 project.
01:17When students ask the hologram a question, the AI selects the most appropriate answer from his interview.
01:23Manfred Goldberg has since passed away, but his story lives on through his hologram.
01:28Accessible, but never a substitute for him.
01:32Speaking with holograms of survivors can even be done from home.
01:35On the Illinois Holocaust Museum website, you can either use a chat or voice messages.
01:43Obviously, they knew who we were.
01:45It was the death march.
01:46They saw the rest go by, probably.
01:48In Germany, the equivalent is the Holo Voices project.
01:53Here, you are seated in a room with others and can jointly ask questions to holograms of Holocaust survivors, like
01:59Eva Weil and Inge Auerbacher.
02:03It was really impressive.
02:05For a moment, you really felt as if the person was actually sitting there.
02:11If the dialogue with the hologram works well, participants can even develop a sense of closeness.
02:17What's really promising about the recordings is you can ask questions you really want answered.
02:22For example, I've seen people ask questions like, how much did you weigh on liberation?
02:27And they probably wouldn't have asked that of a survivor in person.
02:32However, if you don't have enough knowledge about the Holocaust, you might not be able to frame questions in such
02:39a way that you get meaningful responses and that can become really frustrating.
02:44An AI selecting the answers does not mean that it is inventing anything new.
02:51All answers are original.
02:53There's no generative AI behind it that would invent an answer and potentially risk reproducing something that isn't actually true.
03:01Rather, this AI searches for the best possible answer to a question, which is then reproduced without any changes.
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