Techno Societies

The extraordinary development of science and technology is the main and distinctive feature of our time and, above all, of a society already labelled as the "information society". The challenges posed by scientific and technological development to the Law are enormous and cross-cutting, covering areas such as the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI Act), legal-tech, national and international security (cybersecurity, predictive policing, autonomous weapons), the protection of democracy and fundamental rights (in a hyper-surveillance society), the digitalization of private law (digital platforms, smart contracts, intellectual property), the automation of fundamental services (medicine, transport or justice) as well as the emergence of new fundamental rights in the contexts of brain-machine interface or the metaverse.

The main aim of this group is to promote continuous monitoring, awareness and critical thinking on those topics, with emphasis on the protection of fundamental rights.This goal will be achieved through the following strategic objectives: a) development of research projects, some of them have already begun or are being proposed under the UCILeR (such as “AI and Corporate Crime” or PROFaiLING on the use of AI for risk assessment, crime prevention and predictive policing); b) Promote the creation of interdisciplinary academic networks with areas of knowledge linked to neurosciences and digitalisation (continuing previous collaboration in international networks such as Cost Action - https://tinyurl.com/5bsedk2p); c) Promote closer ties with the private sector, in particular with national (e.g., Critical Software; VOID Software S.A.) and international corporations linked to digital platforms, cybersecurity and generative AI; d) Deepen the study of new legal tools in the realisation of justice with the emergence of so-called legal tech.