The Record Can Be Rewritten, the Consequences Remain: Archives, Artificial Intelligence, and the Memory of War

Abstract

The long-term consequences of war exist independently of how archives, registers, and publications record them. Yet information systems often treat the surviving record as reality. The absence of a document is confused with the absence of an event, while an archival classification becomes a description of a person, victim, or process. This paper treats the archive as a historically formed and adjusted distorted mirror. The state sets a political direction, while the expert community translates it into categories, catalogues, and authoritative knowledge. Rewriting the past must therefore be understood as a long-term consequence of war. Data on victims, mass graves, and conflicting evidence require four levels: what happened, surviving evidence, human and institutional interpretations, and algorithmic conclusions. Artificial intelligence reduces the cost of comparing bodies of documents and allows small groups to test official versions of the past. It can automate political distortions and give unproven conclusions the appearance of knowledge. A reliable information system must preserve the origin of every claim, contradictions, uncertainty, and the history of corrections. Its task is not to create a final past, but to prevent interpretations from destroying evidence and presenting themselves as reality.