Beyond Greenwashing: Governing Sustainable AI for the Common Good Through a Virtue Ethics and Human-Centered AI Framework

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes deeply embedded in human and organizational life, debates about Sustainable AI demand renewed ethical reflection. Current approaches often remain fragmented—separating AI for Sustainability, such as climate-mitigation applications, from the Sustainability of AI, including the intensive resource use and discriminatory effects of AI systems themselves—and lack a coherent moral foundation. This article addresses Sustainable AI as an integrated ethical concept, rather than focusing narrowly on either strand, and reframes it through the lens of virtue ethics, emphasizing human flourishing, moral agency, and the pursuit of the common good. Complementing this perspective with the Human-Centered AI (HCAI) paradigm, we develop an integrated governance framework that incorporates MacIntyrean categories of practices, institutions, and traditions while explicitly addressing the environmental, socio-cultural, economic, and organizational dimensions of the common good. In this framework, these four dimensions identify the substantive goods that Sustainable AI should protect and promote, while the micro (practices), meso (organizational and governance structures), and macro (cultural-historical traditions) levels specify the constructive conditions through which such goods are discerned, coordinated, and sustained over time. The framework illustrates how virtues can guide the responsible design, deployment, use, and oversight of AI systems. Our contribution is threefold: we advance Sustainable AI ethics by grounding it in virtue ethics and the common good; we extend business ethics by introducing a virtue–HCAI approach to governance; and we bridge theory and practice through a multi-level model that offers conceptual clarity and ethical orientation for long-term human flourishing.