🤖 Artificial Justice: A Realistic Look at AI in the Future of European Justice
🎬 The film by Simón Casal tackles the major debates around AI from a European perspective—without exaggeration ⚖️ 🤖 Catalonia creates a Directorate-General for AI, Efficiency, and Data
Artificial Justice, a 2024 film by Simón Casal available on Prime Video, is a must-watch for AI enthusiasts and scholars. I didn’t get the chance to watch it until this weekend, but despite the months since its release and the dizzying pace at which AI is evolving, Artificial Justice remains remarkably relevant. It addresses the key issues of our time, doing so through a realistic vision of the future and settings that feel close and believable—making its impact all the more powerful and thought-provoking, in contrast to other films that rely on excessive fiction. In other words, what you see in Artificial Justice might soon feel more like a documentary than a science-fiction film. The application of AI in public administration and justice, algorithmic justice, the need for transformation in the public sector, facial recognition, autonomous driving, and the political and economic interests behind human delegation to AI are all timely topics.
I was captivated by Simón Casal’s film, especially by its distinctly non-American realism—deeply European, even in its local texture—and by the profound debates it raises through an engaging and compelling storyline. The Galician director’s third film is ambitious and, at the same time, necessary, as it goes beyond clichés, avoids excess, and cuts deep in the global debate on artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity. Watching Artificial Justice is a good way for those who cannot (or do not want to) imagine what lies ahead to get a glimpse of what we’ll be facing in Europe in the coming months and years.
A referendum in which Spanish citizens are asked whether they want to delegate justice to an AI system named Thente, relegating human judges to a secondary review role in an effort to streamline justice, avoid collapse, and rationalize decision-making. A government referendum purportedly to depoliticize Spain’s justice system—while handing over full control to opaque companies and algorithms.
Artificial Justice is built on a solid plot, characters like Judge Carmen Costa (played by Verónica Echegui), and landscapes that turn the underlying issue—AI in the justice system, just one sphere of the public sector and state power—into something we’re likely to live through sooner rather than later. Watch and enjoy Simón Casal’s film. It's about time we had a film about AI that entertains without relying on American productions detached from our culture and collective imagination. The ambition of Artificial Justice and the cinematic result, given its available resources, make this a significant work. Released ten months ago, its relevance has only grown in light of recent developments. Technology, power, democracy, justice, humanism, and much more.
🚀 Catalonia bets on AI—but can it really transform public administration?
This weekend, Catalonia announced the creation of a new Directorate-General of Artificial Intelligence, Efficiency, and Data, under the Department of the Presidency, specifically the Secretariat for Telecommunications and Digital Transformation. It remains unknown whether Salvador Illa’s government will be innovative enough to appoint an AI system to head this new directorate—as Simón Casal's film suggests for the justice system—or whether a human will be appointed to lead an office that, despite its cross-cutting mission and lack of budget, will face enormous challenges in reinventing and streamlining Catalonia’s administration, which, despite having been restored with democracy, still strongly resembles that of Spain.
Initial headlines from the Department of the Presidency stated an ambitious goal: that 60% of Catalonia’s public workers will use AI by the end of this year. Time will tell. It doesn’t seem reasonable that, by May 2025, AI’s role should be confined to just a directorate-general, nor that such a body should be burdened with solving what humans have repeatedly failed to accomplish over multiple legislative terms: streamlining, rationalizing, debureaucratizing, and professionalizing various layers of Catalan administration and political decision-making—areas that often lack even human intelligence. The intention is welcome, but it is more than likely that this directorate-general is already outpaced by the reality of companies, tools, and people who are adopting AI fearlessly and effectively.
[This article from Transparent Algorithm #85 is also available in Catalan, Spanish, French, and Italian.]