The Spanish film “Artificial Justice” explores artificial intelligence: Iberseries

Would you rather be tried in court by a human or by artificial intelligence? This was one of the key questions discussed on Wednesday evening during the Iberseries & Platino Industria conference and fair in Madrid.
Platino Educa, the event’s educational platform, showed a new film Artificial justice (Justycja Sztuczna) from Spain and Portugal. The film was written and directed by Simón Casal, starring: Verónica Echegui, Tamar Novas, Alba Galocha and Alberto Ammann.

“In the near future, the government intends to replace judges with artificial intelligence software, pledging to effectively automate and depoliticize the justice system,” the summary explains. “Carmen Costa, an outstanding judge, was invited to evaluate this new procedure. But when a software developer is found dead, she realizes that her life is in danger and that she will have to fight powerful interests that are at stake at the highest levels of the government.

The audience reacted very positively to the film, judging by the applause that appeared after its screening.

It was then time for producer Mariela Besuievsky, actor Ammann, Juan Fernandez Tamames, lawyer-secretary at Telefonica’s Criminal Enforcement Commission, and Spanish Supreme Court Justice Antonio del Moral to answer questions and discuss the film’s implications for the current debate on the role of artificial intelligence.

Besuievsky told the audience that Casal started working on the project about five years ago because he was interested in the impact of big data and ChatGPT. For the film, he “decided to focus on justice,” which was also helped by the fact that his wife is a judge, she said, according to an English translation of all the panelists’ Spanish comments delivered via headphones during the event.

The story of Carmen and her life situation presented in the film was key to exploring the debate between humans and technology. “With Carmen, we wanted to make the film more human and personal,” explained the producer. “This is Carmen’s human story,” Amann added.

Besuievsky shared that at one point in the film’s development, she asked the creative team if they should also use artificial intelligence in the film to highlight a key theme and conflict in the story. The reaction was clear. “There was a huge rebellion,” he said.

In one interesting part of the film’s plot, a character reveals that some of the key people behind the development of artificial intelligence tools may be receiving preferential treatment from them rather than the promised objective decision-making process. “Will we have VIP codes?” Besuievsky summarized one possible future question related to artificial intelligence. “It’s terrifying.”

Discussing the moral issue of artificial justice, del Moral told the panel that the technology may be more accurate, but not always fair in a human sense. “Human justice is not perfect,” he said. “Algorithmic justice is tempting, but it would make us… lose our humanity.”

Adding that he sometimes felt like he was being reminded Blade RunnerTamames argued that governments and industry will mainly focus on developing safeguards and guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence.

Ammann expressed some concern, wondering aloud whether real life and film might differ mainly in terms of informing the public and getting a say in AI in film.

The actor also said that some of the seemingly futuristic technological themes explored in the films may turn out to be a reality sooner than expected. “IN 2001: A Space Odyssey“I saw my first video call,” says Ammann, “and I thought it would never happen. Now we have it on all our cell phones.”

Earlier in the sessions on the second day of the fourth edition of Iberseries, representatives from Anonymous Content and Fremantle were present to discuss their television strategy and growing film business.