The Legal–Digital Metamorphosis of the Individual

Abstract

Highlights: What are the main findings? The current sophistication of AI systems affects the concept of the human being in an ius-philosophical sense. What is the implication of the main finding? AI can’t match human intelligence in terms of argumentative capabilities, but this is not an impediment for law to grant these systems increasing degrees of ‘personhood’, as the concept of personhood in law is also artificial and therefore, in theory, could treat them as natural individuals. There is a hard relationship between law and techno-science; two powers that shape reality. In principle, these powers shape reality by acting as two poles of a battery, i.e., endowed with opposite charges: techno-science is a mechanism for overcoming the limits that human beings encounter in their relationship with nature; law, on the other hand, reveals its face by imposing limits on human action, which, by nature, is free of certain bonds. From a general point of view, certain unavoidable normative requirements seem clear in the effort to regulate new technological applications. Artificial intelligence poses new questions for legal theory and tests both the responsiveness of the system and the traditional and current conceptual categories. The challenge stems from the need to adapt the law, through normative or hermeneutic evolution, to a reality that is changing at a frenetic pace and with unpredictable mutations. All attempts to regulate AI to date have declared that scientific innovation must be brought within the framework of human rights. However, there is a question, rather a more general, I would even say preliminary, challenge to be faced without epistemic prejudice: do the applications of AI in any way affect the very meaning of the human? AI has a huge potential to improve the human condition (provided we can clarify what ’improve’ means) but, at the same time, increases, in terms of rights, unforeseen and unforeseeable challenges for existing treaties. This is due not only to the crisis of the legal dimension but also to the fact that its impact influences the notion of what we have hitherto conventionally considered as human beings.