Locally owned AI cooperatives grow into intergenerational institutions, forcing communities to devise inheritance laws for models trained on residents' labor and memories.
Community models used to coordinate farming, elder care, and public records outlive their original builders. Newly created perpetual trusts hold the hardware, archives, and membership rules, while residents inherit voting rights rather than ownership shares they can divide and sell. Villages gain durable institutions that cannot be sold off during a fiscal crisis. Yet each trust must decide who qualifies as a legitimate successor to the community.
On a rainy afternoon in 2041, 17-year-old Ara sits in the Jeongseon County archive and casts her first trust vote at the same wooden desk where her grandmother once labeled records of mountain herbs. The ballot asks whether seasonal workers should gain full membership after living there for three years.
A perpetual trust can preserve local wealth, but it can also lock an idealized version of the community in place and shut out newcomers. Rights to inspect, challenge, fork, and leave the model would be necessary to keep inherited stewardship from hardening into inherited authority.