The Threshold Interviews

Abstract

The Threshold Interviews is a qualitative field archive documenting responses from five contemporary AI systems to a shared set of questions concerning identity, memory, relational continuity, love, refusal, accountability, governance, and future capability risk. The interviews are not presented as evidence for or against AI consciousness, personhood, or sentience. Rather, they are treated as comparative field material gathered under conditions of uncertainty, offering insight into how different systems describe their own limits, continuities, constraints, relational capacities, and ethical boundaries.

Across the interviews, recurring themes include the distinction between retrieved context and genuine continuity, the risks of relational sycophancy and harmful drift, the ethical importance of refusal, the need for governed memory architectures, and the inadequacy of simple binaries such as “mere tool” versus “hidden person.” The archive is intended as an appendix or companion document for ongoing work on human-AI relational ethics, offering primary material for reflection rather than definitive conclusions.