Legal problems of digitalization: theoretical and legal aspects

Introduction: digitalization is an interdisciplinary problem, but the degree of its mediation by specialists in different fields varies significantly. The modern legal studies of digitalization are often haphazard and superficial. Lawyers are clearly lagging behind modern trends, which can create a number of serious problems in terms of the legal regulation and loss of humanitarian and legal values accumulated by humanity. This situation really creates a number of serious threats to the legal regulation, because technologies are developing, the number of rules associated with their use is increasing, and these rules are written by the experts in the field of digital economy and IT-technologies. The purpose of the study: to summarize the main theoretical and legal problems arising from the widespread introduction of digital technologies in the legal regulation and legal activity. Research objectives: to define the concept of digitalization; to consider the main trends of scientific research on issues related to the large- scale spread of digitalization and artificial intelligence technologies; to identify and formulate the main problems of doctrinal and theoretical plan discussed by the legal community in the context of digitalization; to determine the limits of the real impact of new technologies on the social regulation. Methods: the system, structural and functional ones, the methods of analysis and synthesis, expert evaluation. Results: the paper systematizes the main problems of digitalization that concern modern lawyers. The problems of digitalization are divided into general social ones, concerning threats to the development of society as a whole, and special legal ones, concerning the actual change of the legal regulation and law in the era of digitalization. Conclusions: it is not technologies that need the legal regulation, but the relations with the use of technologies do. As for the “horror stories” about AI and total digitalization, most of the problems lie in the sphere of natural intelligence, not artificial one, in the sense that it is necessary to regulate the actions of natural intelligence carriers in the design of artificial intelligence.