Asaf Artsi

The numbers the Nazis tattooed on prisoners’ wrists were IBM identifcation codes. The IBM computers decided where people were sent. I wonder: is this the first big example of using the fence of “it’s just algorithms” to declaim personal responsibility?

IBM’s German subsidiary paid $3 million into a fund for holocaust victims, while never admitting any responsibility. Soooo let’s see, apparently IBM figured that each person their systems sent to their death was worth 18 cents. Noted.

Oh, but lots of those folks were killed in other ways, you say! Not all were scheduled for termination by computer! Ok then, let’s take the narrowest possible number. Let’s consider only people killed in extermination camps, whose rail system was run by computer.

Let’s not include any deaths at concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, or Buchenwald, or in prison camps, labor camps, or ghettos. (Even though IBM’s computers & technicians had a huge hand in ‘relocating’ people to those places as well.)

$1.15 That’s how bad IBM felt about each person their algorithms murdered.

I’m going to go hug my kids. Remember that the work you do and who you do it for matters. Ask the questions. The real ones. The uncomfortable ones.

CORRECTION: the numbers tattooed onto prisoners’ bodies at Auschwitz were not IBM computer codes. Thanks @AuschwitzMuseum for the correction & subsequent discussion.https://twitter.com/auschwitzmuseum/status/1038825257535242240?s=21 …

IBM’s technology enabled the Nazis to track people, & their algorithms determined how “relocate” them to camps & ghettos efficiently, but the numbers assigned to prisoners at Auschwitz were generated by hand, & records there were handwritten or typed.