“Pinchas, how old are you?” Steven Spielberg asked the wall screen, a life-size video image of an elderly man in a cardigan, who blinked and answered without missing a beat.
“I was born in 1932, so you can make your own arithmetic,” responded Pinchas, in a Polish accent.
“He asked me to do the math!” Mr. Spielberg laughed. “How did you survive when so many did not?”
“How did I survive?” the screen responded. “I survived, I believe, because provenance watched over me.”
The chat went on for five minutes, and while the artificial intelligence looked eerily reminiscent of Mr. Spielberg’s earlier films, the