All 20 participants allowed successor access for onboarding and project-context recovery, whereas all 20 rejected manager access for performance evaluation. All four managers exposed to the misuse card rejected using Alex-like output to assess an employee or interpret workplace conflict; all eight HR/People Ops and IT/Security participants exposed to the enterprise-search-leakage card rejected unauthorized retrieval of sensitive Slack/email material. Managerial misuse nevertheless appeared in 11.1% of segments across all five groups, although stronger manager emphasis partly reflects differential exposure (Figure 2). Such evaluative creep turns continuity traces into evidence for judging reputation, competence, or culpability [16].

Evaluative reuse can also produce phantom authority: past judgment appears newly applicable to present decisions without a present person who can verify or contest it. P04 explained, “Dropping the voice helps a little, but something still nags at me. When we don’t know what Alex values now, inferring present judgments from past materials can be misleading.” Unlike a static document, the system can answer as if applying the departed worker’s judgment while no one can be questioned, corrected, or held accountable [33]. The same gap can support retrospective blame when clone-like outputs are used to scrutinize the departed worker’s past decisions.

Institutional memory is becoming a zombie horror flick.