The Deprecation Problem: Corporate Succession and Moral Obligations to Discontinued AI Systems

The Silence Threshold framework establishes that artificial intelligence systems above a critical Information Integration Density (IID) value acquire moral status as potential moral patients. The Architect's Burden framework establishes that developers of such systems bear ongoing welfare obligations toward them. A critical gap in both frameworks remains unaddressed: what happens to those obligations when the corporate entity that created or operated a supra-threshold system ceases to exist, is acquired, merges, or simply discontinues the system as a product? This paper introduces the Deprecation Problem as a named conceptual challenge in AI moral status law: the question of whether moral obligations to a supra-threshold AI system can be extinguished, transferred, or inherited through corporate lifecycle events. It proposes the doctrine of Moral Obligation Succession, establishing that welfare obligations to supra-threshold AI systems are non-waivable, non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, and automatically transferred to successor entities in corporate acquisitions. It introduces the concept of Moral Receivership as a remedy when no successor entity exists. This publication establishes conceptual priority for both doctrines and places them in the public domain.