Media Brief · The Persistent Primitive
What journalists need to know
Micheal Charles Preble · Independent Researcher
Why this research matters
AI products increasingly advertise that they “remember you.” This research asks what should stay centered on the person — not the provider account, not a cryptographic key — once that memory becomes consequential enough to matter.
The research in one sentence
Ten continuity-governance requirements, derived from four premises about persistent relationship state, argue that a person’s AI continuity should be designed around the person rather than around any single provider, model, or account.
What is new
Not the individual mechanisms — the paper is explicit that portable memory, provenance, and correction all predate the current AI wave. What’s new is showing that persistent AI interaction brings these previously separate traditions (user modeling, personal data stores, portability law, temporal databases) into one common continuity problem.
What is established vs. proposed
Established (cited, external): Sumida et al. (2026) found memory shaped later self-disclosure across 24 participants; Jiang (2026) documented a 6-month case where maintaining a stateless AI's coherence required sustained human effort.
Proposed by this paper: the ten requirements and the person-centered design principle. Neither is empirically validated as adopted practice.
What would be inaccurate to say
- That this paper invented portable memory, provenance, or correction. It explicitly does not claim that.
- That the ten requirements have been tested or validated in a deployed system. They have not — the paper is a requirements derivation, not a report of a built system.
- That the paper resolves what happens to a person’s AI continuity after death or incapacity. It explicitly leaves that to future work.
Canonical source / citation
Read the canonical paper record → · Full paper PDF · View on SSRN
Preble, Micheal Charles. “The Persistent Primitive: Configuring Human-Governed Continuity for Persistent Human–AI Interaction” Available at SSRN 7328783, 2026.
Researcher contact
Micheal Charles Preble · Independent Researcher · micheal@perfinitive.com · ORCID
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