Ethics of the Algorithm: Digital Humanities and Holocaust Memory

The Holocaust is one of the most documented—and now digitized—events in human history. Institutions and archives hold hundreds of thousands of hours of audio and video testimony, composed of more than a billion words in dozens of languages, with millions of pieces of descriptive metadata. It would take several lifetimes to engage with these testimonies one at a time. Computational methods could be used to analyze an entire archive—but what are the ethical implications of “listening” to Holocaust testimonies by means of an algorithm? In this book, Presner and his colleagues explore how the digital humanities can provide both new insights and humanizing perspectives for Holocaust memory and history. They suggest that it is possible to develop an “ethics of the algorithm” that mediates between the ethical demands of listening to individual testimonies and the interpretative possibilities unlocked by computational methods. Tracing the affordances of digital tools that range from early, proto-computational approaches to more recent uses of automatic speech recognition and natural language processing, Presner introduces readers to what may be the ultimate expression of these methods: AI-driven testimonies that use machine learning to process responses to questions, offering a user experience that seems to replicate an actual conversation with a Holocaust survivor.

Todd Presner is Professor of European Languages and Transcultural Studies (ELTS) at UCLA and holds the Michael and Irene Ross Chair in the Division of Humanities. He has served as ELTS department chair since 2021. Among his books, he is the author of Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews, Trains and Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration as well as coauthor of Digital_Humanities, HyperCities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities, and Urban Humanities: New Practices for Reimagining the City.

Thursday, February 6, 2025 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM

Ethics of the Algorithm: Digital Humanities and Holocaust Memory
Michael and Irene Ross Program in Yiddish Studies

Todd Presner (UCLA), Anna Bonazzi (UCLA), and Rachel Deblinger (UCLA)

In Discussion with: Tim Cole (University of Bristol)