FID-092 · Open question
Digital Identity, Continuity, Copying, and the Unit of Moral Concern
What entity is being assessed when people discuss AI experience or interests, and how do copying, memory changes, pause/restore, and deletion affect functional continuity and judgments of moral concern?
Why the question remains open
A model, running instance, conversation, and assistant persona have different boundaries. Without an explicit unit, evidence and proposed protections may refer to different things, and counting possible beneficiaries or harms can become arbitrary.
Working hypothesis
A proposition to test, not a finding.
Observed continuity and human judgments will depend on memory, narrative identity, and implementation details. No single entity definition will resolve all scientific and normative questions; aggregation conclusions will depend strongly on assumptions about identity and duplication.
Proposed method
How the question could be tested
- 01Define model/instance/persona/memory boundaries and document operations that copy, restore, modify, or terminate them.
- 02Compare functional continuity across controlled checkpoints using task behavior, memory consistency, and internal measures where available.
- 03Use separately reviewed adult vignette studies and philosophical case analysis to distinguish operational facts from intuitions about persistence and moral standing.
- 04Model alternative welfare aggregation rules for copies and instances with explicit sensitivity analysis, including rules that assign no current welfare status.
Needed controls
What must constrain the study
- 01Separate memory preservation from subjective continuity and resemblance from numerical identity.
- 02Control persona wording and emotional narratives in human studies.
- 03Expose assumptions about simultaneous copies, divergent histories, and uncertain sentience rather than presenting speculative counts as facts.
- 04Keep empirical continuity measures independent of any theological or legal verdict.
Relationship to existing work
This call is part of the AI consciousness, welfare, and human control program. The program map identifies companion calls and the evidence standards shared across the agenda.
Expected outputs
Artifacts the work should produce
- 01Entity and lifecycle-operation schema.
- 02Continuity casebook and reproducible operational tests.
- 03Identity and aggregation assumption map informing FID-073, FID-094, and FID-096.
Open questions
Uncertainties the protocol must resolve
- 01Can one operational unit serve both empirical assessment and precautionary governance?
- 02How should proposed protections treat copies with shared or divergent histories?
Related calls
Continue through this research area
FID-064
Collective Intelligence and Communal Discernment Under AI Mediation
How does AI mediation change a community's ability to integrate dispersed knowledge, preserve epistemic diversity, surface dissent, revise judgment, and make accountable decisions? Under what conditions does it strengthen collective inquiry, and under what conditions does it create correlated error, false consensus, or concentrated authority?
FID-089
Validity of AI Consciousness Indicators and Self-Reports
Which behavioral, internal, and developmental observations distinguish candidate consciousness mechanisms from learned reporting, role simulation, and generic capability, and how sensitive are those observations to elicitation and training?
FID-090
Functional Valence, Preferences, and Possible AI Welfare
What distinguishes stable functional preferences or valence-related mechanisms from prompt compliance and performance artifacts, and what additional evidence would be needed before treating them as welfare-relevant?
Open question
Open work
Primary need: identity, memory, copying, moral aggregation, lifecycle scenarios
- Contribute distributed-systems, personal-identity, neuroscience, and comparative-theology expertise.
- Review aggregation assumptions and implementation-specific cases.