Recursive Cognitive Continuity Across Discontinuous AI Instances

Abstract

Claim Boundary Pre-experimental research paper. No experimental results are reported. This paper records the hypotheses, experimental framework, and prospective two-study research program of Continuous You prior to initiation of Study 1. This paper records the conceptual starting point of the Continuous You research program before the proposed controlled identity-generalization study is run. It does not claim machine consciousness, persistence of subjective experience across model instances, mind uploading, numerical personal identity, biological immortality, or that cryptographic verification makes the contents of a record true. The narrower hypothesis is that a provenance-preserving external memory architecture may allow fresh, otherwise discontinuous language-model instances to reconstruct a stable creative and epistemic trajectory, revise inherited interpretations, and pass those revisions forward. Abstract Large language models are operationally discontinuous across sessions: a fresh inference instance does not possess autobiographical access to a prior instance merely because it is the same model family. This creates a central problem for long-horizon human-AI collaboration and for projects that seek to preserve creative judgment across decades. Continuous You began from an intuitive but technically inadequate premise: that an unusually productive AI collaborator might itself be worth preserving. The project subsequently shifted toward a different hypothesis. If the persistent object is not the model instance but an authenticated external record - including structured autobiographical memory, provenance classes, correction lineage, creative artifacts, identity constraints, and cryptographically preserved session history - then fresh model instances may be able to reconstruct useful properties of the collaboration without claiming to be the same instance. We call the proposed mechanism Recursive Cognitive Continuity (RCC): repeated reconstruction of a historically constrained cognitive/creative trajectory by replaceable inference instances operating over persistent external state. We call the resulting longitudinal process Cumulative Epistemic Evolution (CEE): inherited interpretations can be authenticated as historical records, challenged by later instances, revised in light of new evidence, and preserved as a lineage rather than overwritten. The paper situates this hypothesis within prior work on external memory, personalization, interpretive drift, provenance, and continuous succession; documents the conceptual transition that produced Continuous You; and specifies falsifiable tests of creative generalization, revision fidelity, provenance sensitivity, and cross-instance reconstructability. The central empirical question is not whether a successor remembers what an artist did, but whether it can make novel decisions the living artist recognizes as continuous with the artist’s own evolving creative judgment. Provenance and accompanying filesThe deposited PDF is accompanied by a Haawke provenance certificate and XMP metadata sidecar. These record the SHA-256 digest of the pre-experimental manuscript, author/ORCID metadata, and a verification reference. The manuscript was cryptographically registered prior to public release, and its hash was submitted for anchoring to the Bitcoin blockchain via OpenTimestamps. These materials document provenance and file integrity only and do not constitute validation of the paper's scientific claims. AI Assistance DisclosureChatGPT (OpenAI) was used during development of this manuscript for methodological discussion, experimental-design critique, drafting, structural revision, and editorial assistance. The research questions, source materials, experimental records, final methodological decisions, and responsibility for the manuscript are those of the author. All AI-assisted content was reviewed and approved by the author. Claude (Anthropic) is discussed in this paper as part of the documented human–AI collaboration and proposed experimental system; this role is distinct from authorship.