humanet3 Research Group
How does the ‘human-centered’ digital transition look like?
The humanet3 group is a joint project set up by the MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL), the MPI for Innovation and Competition (MPI-IP), and the Center for Humans and Machines (CHM) at the MPI for Human Development. It works on the overarching hypothesis that the notion of a "human-centered digital transformation" and the principle of "human-centeredness" offer productive lenses to analyze, deconstruct, and reimagine digital public spaces in light of democratic and social values.
Image: Christian Demarco
Overview
The group brings together researchers at PhD and postdoctoral level from all three institutes, combining a variety of disciplinary perspectives, such as legal theory, European law, public international law, competition law, and computational social sciences.
The starting point of the group's research is the diagnosis that the internet as a space for public debate and the exchange of opinions is 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.
Against this backdrop, the group investigates five main research questions:
1. How is the concept of human-centered AI (HCAI) construed in legal and policy documents, how does that differ from the definition of laypeople, and how it is operationalized in empirical sciences? (Chaewon Yun, MPI for Human Development)
This work combines empirical methods with a conceptual analysis. It includes a survey of representative populations in the US and Germany on their perceptions of human-centered AI, with the goal of mapping nuanced differences in the understanding of lay people, and a structured repository of EU legal and policy documents organized around the concept.
2. Under what conditions do individuals perceive algorithmically generated decisions in public contexts as legitimate—and what role does human-centered design of explanations play in closing the gap between technical rationality and normative acceptance? (Arian Henning, MPI for Human Development)
The project sits at the intersection of public law, behavioral science, and computer science, investigating the conditions under which AI-assisted decision-making can be integrated into democratic governance without compromising transparency, fairness, and accountability. It combines legal-normative analysis with explainable AI (XAI) methods and empirical research on human agency.
3. How is "the human" as a legal subject co-constructed in digital public spaces, a space shaped by normative and institutional plurality? (Anna Sophia Tiedeke, MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law, MPI for Human Development)
The study investigates new modes of interrelations between international law and other normativities and institutions, particularly those involved in governance of and by data-based digital technologies, and how they manifest and reconfigure the relationship between collective and individual subjects. Thereby, it contributes both to critical international law and technology and pluralist jurisprudence more generally.
4. How does EU regulation shape the design of the architecture of digital public spaces to change human behavior?(Erik Tuchtfeld, MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law, MPI for Human Development)
This work investigates how EU law influences the behavior of individuals on social media platforms by demanding certain design elements. It contributes to the field of regulation by technology by using platform regulation as case-study, systematizing the corpus of EU digital law along the lines of "architecture of freedom" and "architecture of control."
5. How are incentives to compete and collaborate in the construction of digital public spaces influenced by regulatory regimes? (Germán Oscar Johannsen, MPI for Comparative Public Law and International Law, MPI for Human Development)
The study explores the governance of the digital economy with a particular interest in how economic laws and regulatory regimes configure power relations in digital ecosystems, thereby shaping modes of competition and collaboration for the co-creation and distribution of value. To this end, it examines a variety of governance arrangements, from personalized markets to federated networks and data commons.
humanet3 as a Hub
Furthermore, the group is designed and strategically positioned as a hub, providing both integration and connectivity for its three founding Max Planck Institutes. Its combination and diversity of disciplines attracts scholars from within and outside the Max Planck Society and has helped to establish the hub as a reference point across the respective research fields. This was also shown in the group's 2025 two-day workshop on "Re-imagining Digital Public Spaces for Democracy." More than 40 speakers and engaged listeners discussed how social media, algorithmic practices, and generative AI have altered how people connect, perceive distance, and form communities from the perspectives of law, political science, philosophy, and computer science. The results of the workshop will be published in 2026 in a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance.
In June 2025, the group received the prize as one of ten "Best Research Environments 2024" by the Junge Akademie. It is currently funded by the Max Planck Society for the period from November 2023 to December 2026.
Key References
Kettemann, M. C., & Tiedeke, A. S. (2025). Normativities, normative orders, and pluralism. In G. De Gregorio, O. Pollicino, & P. Valcke (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of digital constitutionalism. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198877820.013.16
Tuchtfeld, E., Johannsen, G. O., Tiedeke, A. S., & Yun, C. (2025). humanet3: The third attempt at a human-centered internet. A research agenda (Research paper / Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition No. 25-21). Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5520438
Tuchtfeld, E., Risini, I., & Gašperin Wischhoff, J. (Eds.). (2025). Eyes everywhere: Surveillance and data retention under the EU charter. Verfassungsbooks. https://doi.org/10.17176/20250326-133455-0
More information can be found on the group's website: https://humanet3.mpg.de.