Families inherit personal models trained across a lifetime, turning accumulated judgment into a contested form of property.
Personal models become repositories of tacit knowledge that diaries and documents never captured. Heirs, employers, and research partners begin fighting over who may consult, modify, or silence them. Estate planning expands to include memory boundaries, permitted questions, and dates when a model must be erased.
At 11:40 p.m. in a Boston apartment, Mina Park asks her late father's model why he abandoned a promising compound, then closes the laptop when it answers in his familiar impatient cadence.
A trained model may imitate patterns without preserving intention or identity. Treating its output as posthumous judgment could let heirs manufacture consent, extend workplace control beyond death, or confuse statistical resemblance with a person's wishes.