(Longreads) – As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.

Last May, I found myself in the basement of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, speaking with the dead. I was sitting in the museum’s holographic theater, a sort of sanctuary room, facing a translucent screen in front of a curtained stage. Projected onto it was a life-size hologram of Sam, an elderly man dressed in khakis and a blue dress shirt. He was smiling and waiting patiently to speak with me.

Years before, the flesh-and-blood version of Sam had sat down to answer a series of questions about his life—the time before World War II, during the Holocaust, and after. (Read More)