PERSON
Thomas Pogge
Yale political philosopher whose work extending
Rawls to global justice — most notably
World Poverty and Human Rights — argues that wealthy nations bear duties to reform institutional structures that produce and perpetuate global poverty, a framework now directly applicable to the global governance of AI.
Thomas Pogge is the most influential theorist of global Rawlsianism — the project of extending Rawls's principles of justice beyond national borders. Pogge argued, against Rawls's own
The Law of Peoples, that the
basic structure to which the principles of justice apply must be understood as global rather than national in scope. The trading systems, intellectual property regimes, financial arrangements, and labor markets that shape life prospects around the world constitute a global
basic structure. Because this structure systematically disadvantages the global poor, and because wealthy nations and their citizens participate in and benefit from it, Pogge argued, they bear corresponding duties to reform the structure rather than merely to provide charitable assistance. His framework is directly applicable to the AI transition, where the institutional arrangements governing development and deployment are inherently global and where the distribution of gains and costs crosses national boundaries in complex and consequential ways.