To mark Israel’s Memorial Day in 2021, the Israel Defense Forces musical ensembles collaborated with a company that specialises in syntheti...
To mark Israel’s Memorial Day in 2021, the Israel Defense Forces musical ensembles collaborated with a company that specialises in synthetic videos, also known as “deepfake” technology, to bring photos from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war to life.
They produced a video in which young singers clad in period uniforms and carrying period weapons sang “Hareut”, an iconic song commemorating soldiers killed in combat. As they sing, the musicians stare at faded black-and-white photographs they hold. The young soldiers in the old pictures blink and smile back at them, thanks to artificial intelligence.
The result is uncanny. The past comes to life, Harry Potter style.
For the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying how everyday engagement with AI challenges the way people think about themselves and politics. We have found that AI has the potential to weaken people’s capacity to make ordinary judgments. We have also found that it undermines the role of serendipity in their lives and can lead them to question what they know or believe about human rights.
Now AI is making it easier than ever to reanimate the past. Will that change how we understand the history and, as a result, ourselves?
Moral cost
The desire to...
