Make access to AI a human right

Originally published in Manila Bulletin

We don’t mint new human rights lightly. But we should add one now: the right to access capable, safe AI. Around the world, language is the gateway to opportunity; AI is a universal language machine that translates, tutors, summarizes, designs, and reasons across barriers of literacy, disability, and geography. When a technology is this general and transformative, withholding it isn’t neutral—it sorts people into those who can participate fully in education, the economy, civic life, and those who can’t.

Human rights aren’t about gadgets; they’re about capabilities. The rights to education, work, information, and expression presume practical means to exercise them. Increasingly, AI is that means. A student in a district without a chemistry teacher can still learn stoichiometry with an AI tutor. A farmer can ask for pest diagnoses in her language. A deaf job seeker can craft tailored cover letters and rehearse interviews. A nurse can turn jargon into plain-language discharge notes. Accessibility isn’t a side benefit; it’s the essence of the case.

There’s also a fairness imperative. As institutions embed AI in hiring, credit, government services, and healthcare, denying people their own access strips them of agency. Without the ability to query, contest, or audit algorithmic decisions, due process becomes abstract. Personal access to AI is a counterweight: It lets individuals check claims, model alternatives, and understand impacts. Rights carry responsibilities, yes, but empowerment cannot be contingent on income, postcode, or bandwidth. If systems will judge us, people need tools to understand and answer back.

Recognizing AI access as a right does not mean unregulated, unlimited use. It means setting a floor: affordable, reliable, privacy-preserving AI for every person; transparency about risks; and remedies when harms occur. It means public options through libraries, schools, and clinics; protections against surveillance; open standards so local languages and cultures are first-class; and sustained funding so researchers and civil society can hold power to account. It also means a right to opt out and to reach a human—especially in high-stakes contexts like health, finance, and justice.

Skeptics say we survived without AI. We also survived without electricity and the internet until those became prerequisites for full participation. The cost of exclusion compounds: Children learn less, patients understand less, workers earn less, and democracies deliberate less. Inclusion compounds too: creativity unlocked, productivity broadened, dignity affirmed. When benefits scale exponentially, the harms of unequal access scale as well.

This is not a trophy for technology companies. It’s a societal commitment to equip people with the means to learn, speak, work, and be heard in a world increasingly run by code. Recognizing the right is the first step. Building it—through policy, public investment, safeguards, and ethical design—is the work ahead. The question isn’t whether AI will shape the future, but whether everyone will have a say in shaping it. Rights exist for that purpose. Let’s extend them to meet the moment: access that is universal, meaningful, and genuinely empowering.

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