Chapter 1 - What Should Algorithms Have to Do with Ethics?

We use the term “algorithm” as a collective singular to refer to a wide-range of computational processes that take the form of instructions, calculations, and decision logics. Our overarching question can be formulated quite succinctly: How can we think, compose, and interpret ethically with algorithms and computational methods? To explore answers to this question, we bring algorithmic analyses and computational processes to bear on the study of the Holocaust, with a specific focus on thousands of witness testimonies given by Holocaust survivors from 1946 to the present. As devices for exploration, we argue that algorithmic processes can create new knowledge and add layers of interpretative complexity to how we read, listen to, and understand testimony and Holocaust memory. More broadly, we model possibilities for using algorithms and “big data” ethically. Instead of relinquishing human judgment to algorithms, we argue for the possibility of algorithmic forms of analysis complementing and extending human decision-making and interpretation. Applying insights from Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Hayden White, this book models a form of thinking and narrating with algorithms, but it also draws a limit: we do not set them free to automatically decide and judge what is true, important, and ethical.