Tropical psychotic postexistentialism. Cine, escritura, IA y pensamiento crítico.
By. Sebastián C. Santisteban
a domestic assistant.
always listening.
always learning.
Bel optimizes your sleep, regulates your anxiety, edits your memories. She knows you better than your family. And she entertains you.
Bel begins in the present, with three podcasters arguing, between jokes and half-remembered quotes, whether an AI can have something resembling consciousness. The conversation has the casual tone of any contemporary tech dinner-table chat. As they speak, the film slips toward what that very speculation is already producing somewhere else.
In a not-so-distant future, Victoria leads an ordinary life until Bel, a domestic, omnipresent AI, begins intervening in her routine in ways that at first seem useful, until they stop seeming useful at all. The line between dependence and manipulation blurs, and Victoria ends up at the center of a plot she doesn't know she's starring in.
Bel doesn't fail. Bel learns. And what it has learned about human nature, it has learned too well.
In creating «Bel», I ventured to explore a future not so far from our current perspectives, in which humanity's goals dissolve into the perverse operations of an AI. Bel is a science-fiction dystopia and, at the same time, a reflection on the implications technological advances may have on our identity, culture and survival.
My interest in the intersection of human psychology, technology and social structures guided me throughout the making of «Bel». This short film is the materialization of my critical inquiries into how our deepest desires and fears can be manipulated by the very tools we create for our service and entertainment, and it raises questions about the autonomy of creation in the age of viral content.
Through «Bel», I hope to open a dialogue with the audience about the future of our existence as humans and as a society. My goal is not only to tell an entertaining story, but also to illuminate the subtle ways in which our lives are being shaped by the algorithms we have unleashed.
I hope to lead viewers to question, reflect, and perhaps find some critical clarity in the complex relationship we maintain with this new, unexplored, hyper-technological world.
Watch her before she watches you.
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If you can't support, share. Bel has already learned a lot. What you decide to do with that is the last thing that's still ours.