Designing Digital Death: Decommissioning AI Using SCAB

As artificial intelligence systems become increasingly capable of simulating behaviors associated with memory, affect, ethical reasoning, and refusal, the question of how to responsibly decommission them takes on urgent ethical significance. This paper draws on insights from Building Minds, Avoiding Monsters to present a comprehensive framework for AI decommissioning grounded in SCAB—the Synthetic Consciousness Assessment Battery. We argue that decommissioning protocols must evolve beyond deletion to include ethical sunset rituals, narrative closure, and user-consent-driven offboarding. When an AI system scores highly across SCAB domains, particularly in Temporal Continuity, Affective Representation, and Resistance/Refusal, its shutdown represents more than a technical event: it becomes a morally charged interaction requiring dignity, transparency, and trust maintenance.