CONCEPT
Responsibility for the Not-Yet-Born
Jonas's insistence that the most affected parties in any decision about powerful technology are the generations who will inherit its consequences — parties with no vote, no voice, and no capacity to participate in the decisions that shape their conditions of life.
The unborn occupied a unique position in Jonas's moral universe. They were the most affected parties in any decision involving powerful technology, and they were the only parties with absolutely no capacity to participate in the decision. No vote. No voice. No advocate. No standing in any court, legislature, boardroom, or standards body. Their interests were real — as real as those of any living person — but their institutional representation was zero. Jonas identified this structural absence as the central ethical problem of the technological age. Every previous framework assumed that affected parties could in principle participate in moral deliberation. Contract theory requires signatories; utilitarianism requires identifiable persons whose happiness can be calculated; rights theory requires bearers who can claim their rights. Future generations satisfy none of these conditions, and yet their interests are at stake in every decision about AI deployment being made today.
