Middle-income states like Thailand face a structural dilemma: EU-style AI regulation exceeds administrative capacity, while voluntary models fail to protect fundamental rights. Leveraging Thailand’s 2025 BRICS Partner status, this study proposes a Thai–BRICS Hybrid Governance Model based on functional modularity. This approach avoids wholesale transplantation, instead selectively adapting regulatory mechanisms from BRICS nations to fit Thailand’s specific legal and fiscal constraints. The model addresses five critical gaps: infrastructure dependency, algorithmic opacity, accountability deficits, institutional fragmentation, and labor displacement. The study’s central thesis is that rights remain symbolic without developmental sovereignty, the material control over digital infrastructure. By prioritizing sovereign capacity, Thailand can ensure that algorithmic accountability is enforceable rather than aspirational. This framework reconciles human rights with developmental goals, avoiding the prohibitive compliance burdens seen in previous GDPR-inspired legislation and positioning infrastructure as a prerequisite for genuine rights protection.

Ⅰ. Introduction: AI Governance at the Developmental Crossroads
II. The Artificial Intelligence System, Sovereignty, and Human Rights
    A. Overview
    B. The Proposed Solution and Central Argument: The Thai–BRICS Hybrid Model
III. Legal Irritation and Strategic Adaptation
    A. PDPA Implementation, Compliance, and Practice
    B. Defining and Operationalizing “Functional Modularity”
    C. Coding Scheme for Functional Equivalence
    D. Case Selection: Why BRICS Partner States?
    E. Limitations
IV. AI Governance and Fundamental Rights:Context and Literature
    A. Three Categories of Rights Under Pressure
    B. Thailand’s Five Governance Gaps
    C. The Fragmentation of International AI Governance
    D. Why EU-Style Rights Frameworks Fail without Infrastructure?
    E. Functional Mechanisms from BRICS Partner States:A Comparative Analysis
V. The Thai–BRICS Hybrid Governance Model:A Rights-Enabling Framework
    A. Pillar 1: Thai AI Stack—Infrastructure as aRights-Prerequisite
    B. Pillar 2: AI Citizen’s Rights Decree—OperationalizingDue Process
    C. Pillar 3: National AI Transparency Registry—Regulatory Visibility
    D. Pillar 4: National AI Council—Unified StrategicCoordination
    E. Pillar 5: AI Transition Fund—Protecting Labor Rights
    F. System Integration and Implementation Sequencing
    G. Synthesis
VI. Conclusion

• Phillip Y. Freiberg(Lecturer at the International College of Digital Innovation (ICDI), Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
• Michael J. Harris(Lecturer in Technology, Business, and Innovation at the International College of Digital Innovation (ICDI), Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
• Parot Ratnapinda(Lecturer at the International College of Digital Innovation (ICDI), Chiang Mai University, Thailand)