Ethics & Consent
How should digital legacy donation work after death, and how can donors control what is preserved?
Research in Progress
Preserving digital legacies to benefit humanity through ethical artificial intelligence.
The Digital Legacy Initiative is exploring how people and institutions can preserve their digital lives and contribute them after death to help future AI learn from authentic human experience.
Mission
Giving back to humanity through lived experience.
We believe every digital life contains experiences, creativity, knowledge, relationships, failures, successes, emotions, and lessons that may one day help humanity. The Initiative exists to research whether these digital legacies can be preserved ethically and donated posthumously for the responsible development of artificial intelligence.
This project begins with informed consent, privacy, dignity, and stewardship. The goal is not to collect data for its own sake. The goal is to create an ethical path for people and institutions to preserve what would otherwise be lost and pass it forward for future benefit.
Research Areas
Questions we are working through.
Privacy & Stewardship
How do we protect living people mentioned in another person’s emails, photos, journals, or archives?
AI & Public Benefit
How can donated digital legacies support ethical AI without becoming surveillance, exploitation, or data extraction?
Preservation Tools
How can ordinary people organize, protect, and prepare their digital legacy before it is needed?
Founder’s Journal
A living record of the work.
The Initiative will keep a journal documenting major decisions, assumptions, mistakes, discoveries, and changes in direction. The journal is not marketing. It is a record of how the project develops over time.
Current Status
Digital Legacy Initiative is in its earliest research phase. We are building the framework, gathering evidence, identifying risks, and preparing a public white paper before proposing any formal institution.
Contact
More soon.
This site is the first public home of the Initiative. Contact information, research updates, and project documents will be added as the work develops.