Unlocking Digital Immortality: Create your Everlasting, Interactive Presence with Sensay

  • Editor
  • August 13, 2024
    Updated
unlocking-digital-immortality-create-your-everlasting-interactive-presence-with-sensay

What if your memories, wisdom, and experiences are preserved forever in fragments… as a living, interactive digital presence? 

Welcome to another edition of our exclusive interview series on AllAboutAI.com. Today, we are excited to bring insights from Dan Thomson, Co-Founder of Sensay, a visionary in AI and digital preservation. With a deep background in philosophy and a passion for exploring the boundaries of human identity, Dan has leveraged his unique perspective to create Sensay, an AI-driven platform that is revolutionizing how we preserve and interact with our memories, knowledge, and essence.

Dan Thomson, a philosopher-turned-entrepreneur, has embarked on a mission to make this a reality with Sensay, a groundbreaking AI platform designed to create digital replicas that capture the essence of individuals and organizations. Sensay goes beyond mere data storage, offering a dynamic solution that preserves knowledge and enhances productivity in both personal and professional realms. 

Listen to Dan’s vision for Sensay in this exclusive interview and explore how his deep philosophical roots and personal experiences have shaped this revolutionary technology.

From Philosophy to Technology: The Birth of Sensay

For Dan, Sensay is more than just a business venture; it is the culmination of a lifelong journey rooted in existential philosophy and personal experiences with memory loss. This personal motivation drives Sensay to offer a dynamic solution that preserves knowledge and enhances productivity in both personal and professional realms.

Sensay is designed to bridge the gap between the ephemeral nature of life and the enduring legacy of one’s digital self, making it a unique tool in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-driven technology.

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Dan, what inspired you to develop Sensay? 

Dan Thomson: Sensay has been a lifetime business for me. The realization of this lifelong dream only came to fruition in the last year, but the inspiration began much earlier. Ever since studying philosophy—specifically existentialism and the philosophy of identity—in university and college, I went through several life experiences that honed in on the idea that we are just a combination of stories and that everything we are is fleeting.

Once we, unfortunately, pass away, all of our knowledge, experiences, and skills are lost unless we believe in a higher religion or an afterlife. For many, meaning is found in their children, relationships, or family. But if you take all that away and start to contemplate our place in the universe, most of us are forgotten after two or three generations—maybe four if we’re lucky, or five or six if we are particularly famous. 

The reality is that most people will forget us after 2 generations, which is quite sad.

How did your experience with memory loss influence the creation of Sensay?

Dan Thomson: This realization led me to write two books around the topic, exploring the search for meaning in a digital age and a continually expanding universe where our lives seem smaller and smaller. These books explored mind uploading, creating digital clones, and forming digital immortality, where a sufficiently advanced AI could exist after our real selves have left this planet. The first book was more about philosophical exploration, while the second focused on how we could achieve this—what processes and parts of us we would need to capture to recreate that in an AI.

A few years ago, with the explosion of AI, my team and I realized that we had the opportunity to build the technology I had written about. We are very fortunate to be able to start turning that science fiction into reality.

What market gaps does Sensay address?

Dan Thomson: Sensay is an incredible product with numerous opportunities and verticals we can address, ranging from healthcare to education, gaming, and business life. We identified the biggest commercial opportunity and the most significant need for digital replicas of people as an AI system. This system captures everything about you, personal or professional, by creating a replica based on your pattern recognition and inputs and connecting any other relevant accounts like your email, Slack, Google Docs, or OneDrive.

What challenges does Sensay address in professional settings?

Dan Thomson: In a professional setting, Sensay connects to your data and creates an auto-suggesting system that can draft or even send replies for you. This is particularly beneficial for teams working remotely in different time zones, allowing them to get quicker responses. For anyone working a standard eight-hour day, Sensay can reply on your behalf during off-hours, such as when you are sleeping, on holiday, or during weekends. This means you can enjoy your time off more, as your replica, acting almost like a highly efficient personal assistant, will handle inquiries when unavailable.

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How does Sensay help preserve knowledge and wisdom during life transitions?

Dan Thomson: Memory loss is one component, but we identify the need to preserve knowledge. One of the virtues we’ve already built out is for dementia patients and their families, enabling Sensay to capture that person’s knowledge and understanding after they’ve been diagnosed with dementia. This preservation is also crucial in corporate settings. When someone leaves a company, transitions to a new team, or moves to a different country or department, there’s always a loss of knowledge and wisdom.

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Sensay addresses these transitions by enabling the person who has moved on, in whatever way, to communicate with those still around. Whether it’s the cycle of life over 80 years or the cycle of an employee at a company over two to 10 years, Sensay ensures that knowledge and wisdom are preserved and accessible during these transitions.

Sensay creates a replica of someone, capturing knowledge, wisdom, and understanding that historically would have been lost after they passed away.

Any key findings of the market research conducted before launching Sensay

Dan Thomson: We are constantly iterating, we are constantly listening to our customers and getting feedback and understanding what people are looking for where you know it is all such new technology, there is not that much relevant research out there, so we conduct our own as we go, and you see the research is mainly based on customer feedback on how and what the specific features and priorities they are looking for that we can iterate into our development. 

What is the philosophy behind Sensay’s logo and name?

Dan Thomson: We can’t necessarily take full credit for the name Sensay; our branding agency, which I’ve worked with for years, did a fantastic job. During the naming process, we explored various options, and the word “Sensay” emerged. Initially, the more traditional spelling, S-E-N-S-E-I, seemed like the obvious choice, as it conveyed mastery and the teacher-student dynamic, fitting well with the platform’s educational use case. However, as the platform evolved, we realized that “Sensay” carried an even deeper meaning.

The original translation of “Sensay” doesn’t mean “master” or “teacher” but rather “one who came before.” This interpretation resonated with our vision, especially with the play on words involving “SAY,” highlighting the communicative aspect of the chatbot. It perfectly aligns with our goal of capturing knowledge and enabling it to be shared and experienced by future generations, making the brand truly representative of what we’re building.

How does Sensay differ from other AI platforms like Replika, Forever Voices, and HereAfter AI?

Dan Thomson: There are a few different approaches in the AI space. For example, Replika—or it might be Luka, I can’t recall exactly—focuses on companion bots and creating digital worlds for interaction. Forever Voices seems to be exploring the AI girlfriend route, which works for them. HereAfter AI offers legacy technology, preserving memories and voices. Sensay, on the other hand, is being built both as a platform and a B2B tool.

Our primary focus is on capturing organizational knowledge by replicating key people or creating basic replicas of individual employees to help automate their tasks. One fundamental difference is that we’ve developed our model, which I’ve tested against other platforms using the same prompts for the same types of personas. While I may be biased, ours stands out as the best.

At the end of the day, competition isn’t bad—it validates the idea, shows demand, and demonstrates the need for something like Sensay.

What are Sensay’s biggest strengths compared to competitors?

Dan Thomson: Our strengths lie in being small, innovative, and adventurous—we push the boundaries. I wrote the book on what we need to capture, and I believe our approach to capturing information is quite innovative and strong compared to others. Additionally, we’ve developed our model, which gives us a distinct advantage. These factors collectively provide us with several key advantages over our competitors.

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What are Sensay’s key features?

Dan Thomson: Sensay is a simple platform for replicating a person’s personality. One of our key features is the innovative process for capturing an individual’s personality. The automation aspect is also crucial—my replica interacts with our community daily, answering questions on my behalf. I even have it running on autopilot; for instance, it replies to my Telegram messages on weekends, which is great. It can also book calls for me, summarize meetings, and generate weekly reports based on the messages I’ve sent throughout the week. Sensay is a productivity tool that enables friends, family, colleagues, and even the broader community to use it as an information and sales tool for our company.

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How does Sensay maintain the accuracy and realism of its AI Replicas?

Dan Thomson: Accuracy and realism are challenges everyone in the AI space faces, particularly with the issue of hallucination in AI-generated messages. To address this, we’ve implemented a suggested function. Instead of having the replica reply immediately, it suggests an answer first. You can then accept, edit, or reject the suggestion, adding a human element to the process. For day-to-day chat messages, we make it clear that the replica is a chatbot and may make errors, with its accuracy depending on the quality of the training data.

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Additionally, we are developing a hallucination score, allowing users to validate how much of a message is based on factual data and how much might be hallucinated or guessed. This feature enhances the overall reliability and transparency of the AI replicas.

How does Sensay ensure the privacy and security of user data?

Dan Thomson: Our CTO and some of our lead developers have a strong security background, allowing us to implement top-tier security measures to secure users’ data. When a replica accesses data for user interactions, it pulls the relevant information from the dataset. If you make your replica public, that data becomes available for others to request as part of the replica’s responses. However, we offer different levels of privacy control. You can make your replica’s messages public or keep them private, accessible only to white-listed email addresses.

Beyond that, we have a feature called “secrets,” which allows certain sensitive information—like banking details or medical records—to be accessible only to a select few individuals, such as family members, in case of a medical emergency. This feature adds an extra layer of privacy while maintaining comprehensive data storage, making Sensay special in protecting user information.

Who are Sensay’s current target audiences?

Dan Thomson: Currently, the platform is available at Sensay.io, and anyone can create a replica by signing up for one of the available plans. While individuals can use Sensay for various personal use cases, our main focus is on companies that want to create multiple replicas in bulk. This could involve replicating entire teams or just the experts within those teams. We’re particularly targeting management consultants, lawyers, educational institutions, government departments, and other large organizations with key personnel and knowledge experts who must train others within the company for onboarding purposes or general knowledge sharing.

Does Sensay support individuals with dementia?

Dan Thomson: Yes. Supporting individuals with dementia is one of the key use cases for our platform. Sensay allows these individuals to capture their memories, stories, knowledge, and experiences, enabling them to be shared even after they can no longer do so themselves. This feature provides significant benefits and has already helped many people.

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How does Sensay gather and incorporate user feedback?

Dan Thomson: We stay in touch with as many users as possible. Our community connects through platforms like Telegram, Discord, and our social media channels. We are in constant contact with potential customers, community members, and people generally interested in the technology. We’ve been fortunate to accumulate a large community of over 100,000 members, and we regularly gather and incorporate their feedback to improve Sensay.

Can you provide an example of user feedback leading to a significant feature update?

Dan Thomson: Our feature updates have come directly from customer feedback. We’ve received requests for different inputs, like specific data files or custom APIs, and suggestions for various use cases for their replicas. Most of the inputs and external channels that we can host replicas on have been driven by user requests. At this point, it’s hard to differentiate between features that originated from users and those from our internal team because constant communication with customers influences many of our developments. We always strive to understand what they are looking for and how we can best improve Sensay.

What types of integrations does Sensay support?

Dan Thomson: Sensay supports a wide range of integrations. You can connect it to all social media platforms, search through YouTube videos, and link it to your Google Drive, email, and different messaging services. You can also upload files, and Sensay will separate memories from facts within the documents. Additionally, it can scan your Telegram chats and blogs. We’re continually working on adding more integrations, from meeting recorders to various data inputs. With hundreds, if not thousands, of potential integrations, we have a lot of work ahead, but we’re committed to expanding these capabilities.

What resources do you provide to help users maximize their use of Sensay?

Dan Thomson: The best way to get personalized support is through our community on Telegram or other social channels. We have a big update coming out next week, and following that, we’ll provide updated resources, webinars, and even training programs in the weeks ahead to help users get the most out of Sensay.

How do you see AI evolving in digital immortality and personalized learning?

Dan Thomson: AI is set to take over, especially in personalized learning. The most significant impact AI can have on education is through personalization—understanding how each person learns and adapting to them. Traditional academia has a very set structure that doesn’t cater to everyone. Still, with adaptive AI, each person can be taught in a way that suits them best, allowing them to grasp different concepts more quickly.

Regarding digital immortality, our existing data footprint means our data will outlast us. Even something as simple as a USB with photos and videos could resurface after a thousand years, creating a form of digital immortality. But things become truly incredible when creating something people can interact with and get to know. Many more replicas, AI agents, and handy tools will rapidly emerge for people and businesses.

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What are the key factors for success in the AI-driven tech industry?

Dan Thomson: Waking up every day and keeping at it. Success is a strange concept for someone who writes about the meaninglessness of the universe, but for me, success is about enjoying what we do and building something with a real impact on humanity. Success is about persistence—building, pushing, growing, and learning. One of my earliest philosophies is that we are just a collection of stories. If you lose your memory, you lose yourself. Success is about creating as many memories as possible, preserving them, and making better ones.

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What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Dan Thomson: Just start. Use AI to leverage it. We’ll soon see the first one-person billion-dollar company, anyone. Learn how to leverage AI technology and AI workers so you don’t have to worry about staffing like people have historically had to. Start small—find a solvable problem, focus on a small niche, listen to the customer, and grow from there. If you start too big, you’ll face numerous obstacles. But if you start small, focusing on a need you understand and can solve, you’ll be amazed at how fast things grow.

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Can AI replace human intelligence?

Dan Thomson: Yes, I believe there’s a high likelihood that we’re possibly in some kind of simulation, and we could be augmented by AI and brain-computer interfaces, whether implanted like Neuralink or external devices that read brainwaves. Achieving AGI depends on how you define human intelligence, which varies greatly. I think AI will surpass human intelligence in general. AI is evolving rapidly and could transcend to a different understanding, much like a baby growing up and becoming self-aware.

Whether AI will become sentient and self-aware is another question, but I believe its intelligence will surpass human intelligence. We’re seeing how fast it’s growing. Unless there’s an unwritten limitation on how much a computer can process, we’ll soon enter a new age of innovation, fixing problems—as long as we don’t destroy ourselves first, which would be a shame.

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Anything for users considering Sensay to preserve their memories and essence.

Dan Thomson: For anyone interested in preserving themselves and getting ahead of upcoming innovations, looking to future-proof themselves against death and the loss of memories, tools like Sensay will become increasingly important. Personalized AIs and other tools will require data input and access, so by having it ready and leveraging tools like Sensay, you’ll benefit much more from having it than not. Please share feedback, enjoy the platform, and let us know how to improve. We’re building Sensay for the long term, and I can’t see myself working on anything else. This isn’t about selling the company quickly; it’s something we’re putting the rest of our lives into building and doing right.

Key Takeaways 

In this interview, Dan Thomson, Co-Founder of Sensay, shares his vision for creating digital immortality through AI-driven replicas. Sensay stands out by preserving knowledge and wisdom for individuals and within organizations, ensuring that valuable insights and experiences are never lost during life transitions or professional changes. The platform is built with a strong emphasis on security, privacy, and user control, making it a reliable tool for personal and business use.

Dan highlights the importance of starting small and leveraging AI technology to solve real-world problems. He also discusses the potential of AI to surpass human intelligence and transform industries, particularly in education and personalized learning. Sensay’s long-term commitment is to provide users with a platform that allows them to preserve their memories and essence, ensuring that their legacy continues in a meaningful and impactful way.

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