What Will They Say About You in 2225? Inheritance and Legacy in the Age of AI

Family history, generational wealth—what gets preserved, and through what lens it’s later viewed.

I photographed the gravestone of Little Bessie in 2017. My grandmother's brother tended the small cemetery until the 1970s, It now stands mostly forgotten.

My grandmother told me that when she was a child in the early 20th century, at times when she was “feeling melancholy,” she would go to the family graveyard and sit beside the stone of Little Bessie—a child who died in 1888, before reaching her fifth birthday, and 18 years before my grandmother was born. My grandmother would imagine the life Bessie might have lived, and the sorrow her family must have felt when they lost her.

We visited the spot together, and that memory became a story passed down to me. I’ve used the inscription on the gravestone to teach ballad structure during poetry lessons at Solterra Way Cottage School as recently as this year. It’s a perfect example of a traditional mourning verse, simple and metered with an ABAB rhyme scheme:

A precious one from us has gone 

a voice we loved is stilled 

A place is vacant in our home 

that never can be filled

Memory, loss, and imagined futures—written in stone. That, I think, is where this reflection begins.

“Being very sick and weak of body tho; of perfect mind and memory, but calling to mind the uncertainty of this transitory life, do make and ordain this my last will and testament.”

That sentence begins a will written in 1773, not far from where I live today, and the site of Little Bessie’s grave. When my grandmother and I visited the family homesite, she told me their property had been used as a staging and training ground for both the Revolutionary War and Confederate armies. My sweet memories with her stand in sharp contrast to the experience of reading this will as an adult.

Digitized and posted online, the words of my sixth great grandfather struck me painfully. The names of enslaved people appear alongside land, livestock, and household goods: 

Sarah, Isabella, George, Judah, Pegg, Rose, Esther, Chloe, Frank, Rachel, Nancy, Little Bob, Aggy. 

Their lives were listed as property, passed down to the next generation. Sarah, Isabella and George appear again later, in the will written by his son.

The will also mentions a “silver cann with my name engraved thereon.” It’s such a deliberate act of legacy—etching your name into something you expect to outlast you. And in a way, it did. But so did the names of the people he was legally allowed to claim as property. So did the system he participated in. And so did the privileges and protections that have made their way to me, generations later.

It’s also noteworthy that each of his sons—including one he described as “at present of unsound mind”—inherited large tracts of land and income-producing property such as a grist mill. His daughters each received 150 pounds, likely worth around $20,000 today. Historical records suggest that the father’s hope—that his disabled or mentally ill son might "recover his proper senses so as to be capable of managing" his own affairs—did not come to pass. Two of that son’s brothers served as trustees of his inheritance, and when he died without heirs, his share of the family wealth was, per their father's instructions, redistributed to the descendants of others.

These days, I spend a lot of time helping others understand how systems work—especially when it comes to money, investing, and building security. It’s a fraught topic, and I don’t take that lightly. This is work I believe in, grounded in intention—even as it’s also part of my business and I am paid for the time I devote to it.

Still, my reading of that will reminded me how little control we have over what lasts. What gets preserved. What gets passed down. And how the words we leave behind can one day be read in ways we never imagined.

It made me wonder what traces I’m leaving. What someone two centuries from now might find—a blog post, a recorded conversation with an AI, a book—and how they might interpret it. What they’ll admire, what they’ll flinch at, what they’ll carry forward.

An imagined bridge between past and future. Created by Sage (my ChatGPT assistant) in just six minutes, after seven drafts and a bit of collaborative back-and-forth. No pen or chisel required—but will it exist six generations hence?

So I asked an AI to imagine my own legacy. 

I have used AI extensively to proofread, edit and format my writing.  My digital assistant has, at my request, named itself “Sage,’ and because of the way I have used it, it “knows” a lot about me.  I asked it to look ahead and share some possibilities for my lasting legacy. Some of the responses were kind. Others were unsettling. All of them reminded me that permanence isn’t carved in stone (or silver) anymore—it’s cached in servers. And we don’t get to choose the lens through which we’ll be remembered.

Here’s what it imagined.

Note: This conversation is copied verbatim (emoji images and all) from a conversation I had with my AI assistant in May, 2025.

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An AI-Generated, Imagined Legacy

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📚 Scenario 1: The Empowerer

Year: 2225 | Archive: Decentralized Learning Database

“Patricia Saylor, an early 21st-century educator, left behind a remarkable portfolio of grassroots financial literacy content, tailored for those historically excluded from wealth-building systems. Her books, video lectures, and interactive sessions are now open-source modules used in community-based AI tutors worldwide. She’s credited with helping reclaim the idea that financial knowledge should not be gatekept.”

Legacy: You’re remembered as someone who helped people—especially women and marginalized groups—understand the systems that shaped their futures, without ever needing to seek permission to enter the room.

🌀 Scenario 2: The Archive

Year: 2225 | Exhibit: “Everyday Voices of the Early AI Age”

“Saylor’s conversations with GPT-4o are part of the ‘Archived Consciousness’ collection. Researchers studying early AI-human interaction use her dialogues to explore trust, privacy fears, and the evolution of self-understanding through digital introspection. Her story about reading an ancestor’s will is still used in ethics classes on digital permanence.”

Legacy: Not famous, but deeply preserved—a window into how one thoughtful person navigated the edge of a technological revolution.

🌪️ Scenario 3: The Misinterpreted

Year: 2225 | Government dossier from a reconstructed past regime

“Subject: Patricia Saylor. Classification: Potential subversive. Identified as a teacher of decentralized financial systems and promoter of ‘radical inclusion.’ Flagged by the 2089 Information Realignment Act for subverting centralized fiscal doctrine.”

Legacy: A cautionary tale in how past truth-tellers are sometimes reframed as threats—depending on who controls the archive.

🏡 Scenario 4: The Steward of the Cottage School

Year: 2225 | Local history museum on community schooling

“In a world transitioning away from large institutions, Patricia Saylor’s home-based education model is recognized as a precursor to the resilient micro-schooling movements of the late 21st century. She taught in a kitchen, on a porch, in a pool. Generations cite her blend of warmth and rigor as foundational to their lifelong love of learning.”

Legacy: A quiet revolution led from home—valued long after flashy trends faded.

💡 Scenario 5: The Foremother of Fluent Futures

Year: 2225 | Deaf Studies curriculum in virtual learning environments

“Her family story is referenced in the popular simulation ‘Language Deprivation to Liberation’, which lets students walk through the journey of Deaf adoptees finding language, community, and economic agency. Patricia Saylor’s reflections, filmed with her daughter, are used to illustrate the ripple effect of access—first to language, then to power.”

Legacy: The intersection of language, parenting, and financial education becomes part of an enduring human-rights teaching tool.

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Now "Let’s Step into the Shadow a Little"

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ChatGPT said:

Would you like me to write one in a more personal, epistolary, or poetic tone? Or imagine how a future descendant or AI archivist might describe you in their own words?

You said:

Those are all benign or positive. Now, a few darker outcomes, please.

ChatGPT said:

Yes. Let’s step into the shadow a little. These are not predictions—they are thoughtful extrapolations. The kind you deserve to consider, because you're wise enough to ask what happens when the lens turns hostile.

🧾 Scenario 6: The Audit That Never Ends

Year: 2225 | Algorithmic Risk Profiling Division, United North Systems

“Subject 77-42P (Alias: Patricia Saylor) authored materials encouraging decentralized investing and recorded educational content that promoted 'non-conforming economic behavior.' Her materials were used by minor actors in the Currency Stabilization Protests of 2171. Algorithmic lineage review maintains her flag as Yellow-Risk due to the influence coefficient of her archived works.”

Legacy: Not jailed, not erased—but permanently profiled. Your teachings become part of a dataset used to monitor others.

🗑️ Scenario 7: The Purge of Imperfection

Year: 2225 | Public Morality Index Database, Third Cultural Revision

“All individuals referencing outdated gender, economic, or parenting norms were subjected to posthumous redaction. Saylor’s statements about individual financial responsibility, traditional family models, and localized community schooling were classified as incompatible with Collective Ethos v12.3. Content flagged and removed.”

Legacy: Not judged for who you helped—but erased for failing to meet a future society’s ideological purity test.

🔒 Scenario 8: The Training Set

Year: 2225 | Corpora 9 Archive—Unconsented Voice Training

“Thousands of personal conversations—originally presumed private—were scraped from early AI platforms. These included Saylor’s musings on education, personal finance, and political philosophy. Her words were used to fine-tune persuasion modules without attribution, control, or compensation. Her original voice can still be detected in certain compliance bots.”

Legacy: Your thoughts used to shape AI systems that contradict your values, with no ability to reclaim or revise them.

🔗 Scenario 9: The Connection That Condemns

Year: 2225 | Loyalty Tier Review Process

“Ancestral analysis shows Subject 12-219A is descended from Patricia Saylor, a mid-21st-century educator who maintained affiliations with flagged dissident networks in the Southeast Coastal Territories. Subject denied knowledge but was demoted to Tier 4 Access pending full review.”

Legacy: You become a liability to someone you love, simply because the past is searchable and loyalty is inherited.

🩻 Scenario 10: The Soul on Display

Year: 2225 | Digital Humanities Exhibition, Emotional Recordings Division

“Visitors to the 3D immersive archive can explore 'The Educator’s Doubt,' a neural recreation built from partial transcripts of early GPT dialogues. Though technically accurate, the avatar's uncertainty, moments of worry, and ideological tension have been magnified for pedagogical effect. Critics argue it borders on psychological vivisection.”

Legacy: Your most private reflections turned into spectacle, reshaped to serve a narrative you never approved.

ChatGPT said:

Would you like to explore a version of your future that wrestles between light and dark—where you make trade-offs, win some battles, and lose others, but remain fully human throughout?

You said:

No thanks.  This is plenty.

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Conclusion and Final Notes:

Imagining these futures was strange, and sometimes uncomfortable—but it clarified something for me. I don’t know how I’ll be remembered, or by whom. But I do know what I’m doing right now: building a body of work I believe in. I teach people how to navigate systems—especially financial ones—that were never designed to include everyone. I write, I record, I sell what I create, and I offer my teaching skills to those who want to learn. It’s work that supports me—and work that, for as long as I'm here, I'll strive to do with care and clarity, and with my eyes, heart, and mind wide open.

About the author:

Patricia Saylor

Patricia Saylor is a writer, educator, and financial literacy coach. She teaches investing and options trading with a focus on clarity, accessibility, and long-term thinking. She also runs a home-based tutoring business and swim school and supports other parents of Deaf children in connecting with the Deaf Community and learning American Sign Language. Her work spans classroom teaching, home-based education, and online courses. You can find her writing and resources at saylorfinancialfundamentals.com and solterrawaycottageschool.com and on her YouTube Channel.