More-than-human standing

A seed scenario for the Epistemic Futures Atlas. Scenarios are thinking tools, not predictions.

Building on legal experiments that granted rights to rivers and ecosystems, this imaginary extends standing into technology governance. Every significant AI deployment must answer to representatives of the more-than-human world: appointed guardians argue on behalf of watersheds affected by data-center cooling, species affected by land-use change, and generations not yet born.

AI itself plays a double role. It is a subject of these assessments — but also an instrument for them, translating ecological signals into evidence guardians can bring to the table. The radical de-centering of the human that deep ecology calls for is here reconciled with practical governance: humans still decide, but they can no longer pretend the room contains only humans.

Questions this scenario raises for the present:

• Who could legitimately speak for the more-than-human in today’s AI assessments?
• What would an AI impact statement written to future generations contain?
• Where does representation end and ventriloquism begin?