Should AI Become an Intergenerational Civil Right?

2025-12-09

AI Summary

A fundamental tension exists between AI democratization and resource sustainability: expanding access promotes inclusivity, yet unconstrained growth exacerbates energy, compute, and network resource consumption, whereas restricting access undermines equity and fundamental rights. To address this, we propose a novel “intergenerational civic rights” framework, formally establishing equitable access to AI public services as a legal foundation that balances contemporary inclusivity with future generations’ ecological rights. Methodologically, we design and prototype an AI Delivery Network integrating edge-cloud collaboration, decentralized inference, and energy-aware networking. Our contribution lies in systematically bridging the longstanding divide between fairness and sustainability in AI governance, delivering a solution that is ethically grounded, technically feasible, and institutionally actionable. This work lays both the normative foundation and technical blueprint for just and environmentally sustainable AI infrastructure. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Bias, Fairness & Equity
• Humans and AI: AI for Accessibility
• Machine Learning: Efficient ML / Green AI

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Responsible Web: Web for democratic and emancipatory futures

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a foundational layer of social, economic, and cognitive infrastructure. At the same time, the training and large-scale deployment of AI systems rely on finite and unevenly distributed energy, networking, and computational resources. This tension exposes a largely unexamined problem in current AI governance: while expanding access to AI is essential for social inclusion and equal opportunity, unconstrained growth in AI use risks unsustainable resource consumption, whereas restricting access threatens to entrench inequality and undermine basic rights. This paper argues that access to AI outputs largely derived from publicly produced knowledge should not be treated solely as a commercial service, but as a fundamental civil interest requiring explicit protection. We show that existing regulatory frameworks largely ignore the coupling between equitable access and resource constraints, leaving critical questions of fairness, sustainability, and long-term societal impact unresolved. To address this gap, we propose recognizing access to AI as an emph{Intergenerational Civil Right}, establishing a legal and ethical framework that simultaneously safeguards present-day inclusion and the rights of future generations. Beyond normative analysis, we explore how this principle can be technically realized. Drawing on emerging paradigms in IoT--Edge--Cloud computing, decentralized inference, and energy-aware networking, we outline technological trajectories and a strawman architecture for AI Delivery Networks that support equitable access under strict resource constraints. By framing AI as a shared social infrastructure rather than a discretionary market commodity, this work connects governance principles with concrete system design choices, offering a pathway toward AI deployment that is both socially just and environmentally sustainable.

Problem

• Balancing AI access for social inclusion with sustainable resource consumption.
• Addressing the gap in regulatory frameworks for equitable AI access.
• Proposing AI as an intergenerational civil right for fair, sustainable deployment.

Innovation

• Proposes AI Delivery Networks for equitable access
• Uses decentralized inference to reduce resource consumption
• Integrates energy-aware networking for sustainability