Knowledge drain is one of the biggest costs for enterprises, with Fortune 500 companies losing $31.5 billion a year due to loss of organisational knowledge (IDC).

Sensay is an AI startup that enables businesses to create AI-powered digital replicas, or avatars, of the organisation and its employees. These replicas automate tasks, assist employees and customers, and can stand in when employees are offline.

The startup has seen rapid growth, with over 2,500 new users onboarding every week. Sensay powered replicas currently participate in more than 600,000 interactions a day.

With AI, enterprise knowledge loss can be mitigated by training small models on the work and communications of experienced experts within businesses. These models can be used to support and train less experienced employees.

Thomson predicts that the use of AI for knowledge preservation, which has until now flown under the radar, will be the biggest value driver for AI at the enterprise level over the coming years.

Dan Thomson, Founder and CEO of Sensay, said: "The loss of organisational knowledge is one of, if not the, biggest costs businesses face on a daily basis. Yet nobody seems to be talking about it. And with many Western societies ageing rapidly, this issue is only going to ramp up.

“Retiring employees with more than 40 years of experience often only have a couple of weeks to pass over and train new hires, and are relying on antiquated paper files or word of mouth to pass on their knowledge.

“This is an issue I discuss with my clients over and over again. And yet all of the conversation around AI is about automation. And because of this, most AI developers have focused on building models and agents that automate repetitive tasks. But this misses the biggest value of AI by a mile – which is to enhance and preserve human skills, knowledge, and expertise.

“Over the next five years, AI’s value will skyrocket thanks to its capabilities to retain, store and communicate the wisdom of older generations to younger, up and coming professionals. It will drive down training and upskilling costs, and deliver consistency and learning in a way that’s never before been seen.”

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