Law, Hiperconnectivity, and the Anthropocene: Reflections on Challenges of Digitalization and AI.

Hiperconnectivity means the factual matter that human beings are nowadays permanently using technological devices, which are generally connected to the internet, like smart phones, digital watches, and personal computers. This article explores the current setting and the future prospects, considering how the permanent connection with digital devices and artificial intelligence may empower and alienate human beings: are these human inventions making us less or more humans in the Anthropocene? On one hand, new technological devices may open windows of knowledge and empower individual users to develop their capabilities. On the other hand, excessive use of technology may also reduce our connections with the life-world and with real human experiences. By examining the challenges related to hyperconnectivity in terms of telecommunications, for instance, we should remember the lessons brought by communications theorist Umberto Eco that we should neither be integrated (fully accept the new masses technology as it is developed without any critical evaluation), nor apocalyptic (fully reject the new masses technology as if it would bring the end of the world without accepting its positive impact). In our analysis, we should focus on the possibilities and limitations of new technologies through an empirical and interdisciplinary perspective brought by sociology of law to the reflection on challenges of digitalization and artificial intelligence. As part of this effort, we summarize the recent developments of algorithmic law as a means of establishing the normative control of algorithms and their mathematical formulas that provide technological commands with concrete consequences in terms of distribution of rewards and sanctions. Prodigious examples of algorithmic law may come, for instance, from episodes of digital discrimination and consumer fraud resulting from misuse of new technologies. The article concludes with final remarks on what we should do to prevent and to correct these wrongdoings for the preservation of our humanity.