humanet3: the third attempt at a human-centered internet
The group analyzes, deconstructs, and contributes to initiatives aiming at a human-centered digital transformation. Its focus will be the digital public space, as space for debate and expressing opinion on the internet. This space is defined by its accessibility and its function, not by its ownership. It includes, in particular, all platforms which claim to contribute to the public good, are generally open to everyone, and are used by the people to communicate personal and political views to a broad audience.
The starting point of the group’s research is the diagnosis that the internet as space for public debate and the exchange of opinions is currently experiencing a pivotal moment for its future at least in two regards. First, because of the accelerated technological development connected to artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models, and second, due to a new wave of regulatory responses. This is certainly not the first shift. Our collective ability to exchange opinions, emotions, and experiences lies at the core of what distinguishes the Web2.0 from its predecessor, the static Web1.0, which understood users as passive receivers, not as active speakers. However, the democratic, utopian vision which has driven the development of the Web2.0 as ‘social web’ in its beginning has been impeded by an unprecedented concentration of private power over global digital infrastructures and services. Individuals, understood as users, are the object of constant surveillance and are reduced to data points and ad-targets, the quality of content is conflated with the quantity of engagement, and attention has evolved into the new currency of success.
In the last years, this development has been accompanied by the rise of generative AI applications, such as ChatGPT and Midjourney, which created new challenges. While such AI tools have existed in the past, the mass availability and high quality of their output is a novelty. Public discourse is based on trust and a common ground of knowledge and ‘truth’. Growing uncertainty about the authenticity or forgery of content, and even about the human quality of one’s interlocutor, reshapes the way in which our discussion culture functions. Furthermore, new agents and possibilities for engagement challenge established conceptions of intersubjective relationships. The socioeconomic effects of generative AI on human creativity, the traditional human-based innovation system, and the concentration of private power are still uncertain and may require additional regulatory action. Moreover, existing biases in AI systems – and in society – can be amplified on a new scale. This could exacerbate current patterns of discrimination against minorities and other marginalized groups.
The surveillance-driven market model of global social media platforms and the current development in the field of AI have triggered an unprecedented momentum for digital regulation in the European Union (EU), kicked off with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016 and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM-Directive) in 2019. In 2021, the EU has presented its larger vision for the digital transformation by publicly ringing in ‘Europe’s Digital Decade’. With its first guiding policy document, the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade, the European Commission aims explicitly towards a human-centered digital transformation which fosters participation in the digital public space.[1] As part of this undertaking, several landmark laws have been enacted. These include the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act as the most prominent ones, but also the Data Act, the Data Governance Act, and most recently the AI Act.
Against the backdrop of these factual and normative developments, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, and the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have decided to set up a joint research group to conduct research on the human-centered digital transformation of the digital public space. As humanet3 group, we conduct research on initiatives aiming at such a human-centered digital transformation from the perspective of legal theory, public law, private law, and computational social sciences in cooperation with other researchers from the Max Planck network and beyond.