The MoralPLai Team Steps Into the Courtroom With The Jury Experience

Who is responsible when a self-driving car causes an accident? This question took center stage on Saturday, June 28th, as the MoralPLai team participated at The Jury Experience, an interactive theater performance that turns the audience into jurors deciding the fate of a high-stakes courtroom drama.

The venue, Munich’s Kolpinghaus Conference Center, was transformed into a realistic courtroom setting. Actors played lawyers, witnesses and defendants, guiding the audience through a 75-minute live experience filled with moral dilemmas and complex evidence. As the audience analyzed witness statements and debated sensor failures, programming flaws and human oversight, participants’ live votes directly impacted the trial’s outcome.

With autonomous vehicles rapidly becoming a reality on our roads, The Jury Experience brought the debate about the responsible development and use of AI and its real-world consequences into the spotlight. Who holds the responsibility when accidents occur? Who should and can be held accountable? The manufacturer, the software developer, the regulators, the passenger or even the vehicle itself?

By emphasizing the responsible design and use of AI, and communicating these themes through theater, The Jury Experiment is in line with the goals and the method of the IEAI’s MoralPLai Project. Namely, The Third Voice, the artistic culmination of the MoralPLai Project, which premiered earlier on May 22, 2025, at Munich’s Amerikahaus aimed to shed light on pressing questions around AI and ethics in general, particularly the use of LLM-based chatbots. Should we rely on AI for emotional support? Should we trust it with our most personal decisions? Can AI provide moral guidance?

Unlike The Jury Experience, The Third Voice left audiences without a clear verdict, instead posing the question: “How should we proceed?” Attendees were invited to participate in a poll that revealed their role as the judge in this ongoing trial and ethical deliberation, highlighting the crucial role we all play in shaping the future of AI design and responsibility.

“When I attended ‘The Jury Experience’, I was eager to see how the ensemble unfolded the story and engaged the audience. It was fascinating to witness AI-related topics being creatively brought to a broader audience, whether through imaginative courtroom dramas or research-based theater, as in ‘The Third Voice’. This production particularly resonated with me, as it closely aligns with my dissertation, ‘Integrating Ethical Principles into AI Systems: Practical Implementation and Societal Implications’, which examines how ethical decision-making principles can be integrated into AI systems. In particular, the work focuses on self-driving vehicles. Drawing on the topic of my PhD research, my profound interest in AI ethics and my experience as Project Lead of ‘The Third Voice’, I found that seeing ‘The Jury Experience’ sparked many new ideas that I look forward to exploring further.” Franziska Poszler, MoralPLai Project Lead

“There is a strong interest in AI-related topics, and the arts can be a powerful way to make these subjects more accessible to a wider audience. ‘The Jury Experience’ was an interesting format that invited the participants to reflect on ethical dilemmas. For me, it was especially interesting to see how people reacted to situations that those of us working in AI ethics often take for granted. Some of the voting outcomes during the performance genuinely surprised me. The experience also made me reflect on how AI is perceived and discussed outside of academic circles and how the way characters are portrayed can reflect or reinforce certain biases. Overall, it was a thought-provoking event, a valuable opportunity to look at these issues from a different perspective and think about how we should proceed with ‘The Third Voice’.”Anastasia Aritzi, MoralPLai Project Communications Consultant

Interested to learn more? Visit the MoralPLai Project webpage and stay tuned for updates.