SOCIAL ACCELERATION AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES FOR LEGAL INTERPRETATION

Abstract

This paper analyzes the institutionalization of artificial intelligence in Law through the lens of Hartmut Rosa’s theory of social acceleration. It begins with the diagnosis that, in late modernity, time has become a social structure marked by the demand for productivity or a “hunger for time,” in which technological advances—under the promise of optimizing work and saving time—ultimately intensify the pace of life and the overload of tasks. In this context, the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence systems (LLMs) into the Brazilian Judiciary is understood as a contemporary expression of this logic of acceleration. Although such tools may offer gains in efficiency, they tend to reduce the space for reflection and the hermeneutical function of legal practitioners, turning legal practice into a supervised and automated activity. The study concludes that, since interpretation is an existential dimension of human understanding, technological acceleration and the delegation of decision-making to machines threaten both the density of Law and the legitimacy of judicial decisions.