Formation ethics: a cross-cultural framework for AI governance

Abstract

AI systems are scaling faster than the human and institutional capacities needed to govern them wisely. This paper calls that mismatch a formation gap, and argues that AI ethics must address not only which principles should guide AI, but what kinds of judgment and responsibility such principles presuppose. To clarify this asymmetry, it employs the bilingual heuristic of “civilization” (文明¹) and “culture” (文化) (Both terms are Meiji-era Japanese neologisms (和製漢語) coined to translate European concepts and later re-borrowed into Chinese and Korean: 文明 (“civilization,” literally “brightness of letters/refinement”) and 文化 (“culture,” literally “transformation through letters/refinement”). Whereas the Western terms derive, respectively from Latin civis (“citizen,” foregrounding the polis) and cultura (“cultivation, tilling,” an agrarian metaphor), the CJK compounds share the graph 文 ("writing, pattern, humane refinement") as their conceptual hinge—locating both civilization and culture in literate cultivation rather than in citizenship or soil. It is precisely this shared root in 文 that makes the pair analytically useful here: not as evidence of a distinct civilizational outlook, but as a vocabulary that holds infrastructural power and humane cultivation within a single semantic field.), not as a civilizational binary, but as an analytic distinction between infrastructural power and the moral and relational capacities needed to direct that power responsibly. The paper develops Formation Ethics as a developmental framework for responsible practice under acceleration. Its primary operational scaffold is Shu–Ha–Ri (守破離), adapted as a practical grammar for AI governance across interface design, organizational practice, and public policy. Through pause, place, and pluralize, Shu–Ha–Ri translates formation ethics into practices that protect interpretive discipline, adapt safeguards to local contexts, and cultivate institutional judgment. This emphasis moves AI ethics beyond principle declaration and compliance toward forming persons, routines, and institutions capable of principled action under uncertainty. The framework diagnoses omission anxiety: a moralized compulsion toward intervention in which restraint appears negligent. Against this pathology, it develops unforced responsibility as a context-sensitive, relational, and temporally disciplined orientation. Daoist wu-wei (無爲) and Buddhist emptiness (śūnyatā, 空性) clarify restraint, non-compulsion, and distributed agency without serving as indispensable foundations. Dialogical Emergence names moments when human–AI interaction transforms a user’s question, responsibility, or practical orientation rather than merely refining it. Methodologically, the paper offers a cross-cultural hermeneutic synthesis aimed at articulating responsible AI governance beyond principles, procedures, and compliance.