Where do we go from here?

History, as a discipline, will always be prevalent. Each decade that passes holds significant historical moments. For example, 9/11 is a moment that made history, and it will always be contextually understood as the moment that air travel changed. The same can be said for the global pandemic. When the 2020s have ended, we will have that moment to look back on, as well as all the changes it brought with it. The point it, we will never run out of historical events to talk about. However, are we struggling to find new ways of teaching others about these events?

Big budget museums are using AI and AR technology to bring art, fashion, and animals to life. The technology brings a new excitement to these types of exhibits. How do we use this technology ethically when talking about or displaying difficult history? I think that we struggle with the balance of making an impact and respecting the people whose lives we are using to make that impact. Are we going to imagine a person standing in front of us giving us their testimony of being in a concentration camp? Is that ethical? How do we imagine it in order to create it and what if we imagine it wrong? Perhaps the best way to go about recreating a scene like this is to base it off of images that exist. By bringing an image to life, we are not using our imagination and degrading or diluting the experience somehow. However, there is something we should consider when bringing old photos to life. What if that person did not consent to their photo being taken? What if that photo was snapped at a moment in time when they were experiencing such intense trauma? What if that person had a hard time or had to avoid looking at that photo in magazines or articles? Even if they have since passed away, bringing a photo to life brings the attached trauma to life with it. We are producing and reproducing someone’s hardest moments in life—is the shock value and potential impact on museum visitors worth that?

Humanity, as a felling, is an interesting enigma. Many of us don’t just want to learn about the past—we want to experience it too. Consider the biennial walks in Ireland that folks in 2019 did in order to “walk with” famine victims from 1847. There is something in us that drives us to follow that exact same path, trying to get as close as possible to history. It is not enough to walk that same path, project leaders involved with National Famine Way are trying to create “location-based” stories, another immersive tool to bring us closer with the past. The question is, how close is too close? How often do we sacrifice the privacy and respect of the people who endured the history for the sake of our learning about it? Something to consider as we progress forward.

To circle back to the topic of AI—it is this author’s opinion that in order to work with the technology we must first understand it and trust it. We must understand it in order to load it with information and see the results. We must also trust it with our information and trust that it will perform how it is supposed to. There are people who do not trust AI and at first it seemed that their distrust came from a place of misunderstanding. Do they have a right to mistrust AI? In recent news, AI has been threatening users and has seemingly caused the death of a human being. Is this nightmare fuel? Someone behind the computer screen pulling the technology’s string? It is likely we will never know. I have linked some recent articles that place AI in hot water. And now this author wonders, will AI fade out with the hype-cycle, or will it be forced out by those who don’t trust it?

“This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please.” A message from AI to us or a glitch? (CBC News).

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/23/character-ai-chatbot-sewell-setzer-death

https://apnews.com/article/chatbot-ai-lawsuit-suicide-teen-artificial-intelligence-9d48adc572100822fdbc3c90d1456bd0

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ai-chatbot-threatening-message-human-please-die/