Meet Our Guest
Dan Thomson, founder and CEO of Sensay, is a visionary entrepreneur pioneering AI-driven digital immortality to preserve human wisdom globally.
Not so long ago, a world where digital clones are real seemed a figment of our imagination. Yet as we got deeper and deeper into technology and the development of artificial intelligence, something that once felt like we were dreaming is starting to feel more like the new reality. And like any big discovery, it needs its papetier, guiding the strings into the right direction.
Dan Thomson is one of the founders of AI-based digital clones. His mission to perfect AI digital coles is driven by his wish not to let memories fade into nothingness as our memory disappears. It is the pursuit of keeping alive our spirits and experiences that make us what we are today.
It can also be considered a useful tool when it comes to persons suffering from dementia or similar conditions, who play tricks on our memory, “wisdom and personality that remain there, just trapped.”
Thomson also focuses on how our memories are fading with time, highlighting their fragility. He also goes deeper into the subject, mentioning that the breakthrough “came when we figured out how to create AI replicas that don't just mimic responses, but actually capture someone's decision-making patterns, their wisdom, their personality”.
“I’ve traveled to over 100 countries, met entrepreneurs, philosophers, artists—people with incredible wisdom that just disappears when they’re gone. That’s a fucking tragedy,” he says. “Sensay became about digital immortality: preserving human wisdom and making it scalable.”
How the Sensay Wisdom Engine Functions
Sensay’s core technology is kept in the AI Wisdom Engine, which Thomson describes as a three-layer system.
- The knowledge extraction: Ingesting data from documents, conversations, behaviors—not just capturing facts but how people think.
- Pattern synthesis: Reconstructing the reasoning behind decisions, the quirks and biases that make someone unique.
- Interactive deployment: Deploying replicas that can respond to new situations authentically, not just replay scripted answers.
“The sustainability comes from the fact that once we’ve captured your wisdom, it’s preserved forever and can help unlimited people simultaneously,” Thomson explains. “We’re not just building chatbots—we’re building digital versions of people.”
The Ethics behind Digital Replication
When it comes to Thomson, he believes ethics are an afterthought; they are the battleground. As he puts it, “Consent is absolutely fundamental. No exceptions. We don’t scrape social media to build unauthorized replicas—that’s dystopian as hell”.
An important part of the process is that users have complete control over and rights over their replicas. So, they can be accessed, and whenever they want, they can stop it. “We’re not creating digital slaves here,” he says bluntly.
On the other hand, he is not denying the risks that technological developments come with. “Look, we’re essentially playing with the fundamental nature of human identity. That comes with enormous responsibility. We’d rather move slower and get the ethics right than rush to market and fuck it up.”
Digital Immortality? Are we close to it?
Despite the bold branding that they have, Thomson does not claim that Sensay has cracked the code to eternal life. His belief achieved something more practical: “wisdom immortality”.
“Right now, we can preserve someone’s expertise, communication style, and problem-solving patterns. That’s already revolutionary for businesses and legacy preservation,” he says. “True digital immortality—capturing emotions, creativity, intuition—is still 10 to 15 years away.”
He’s open about the philosophical questions. If a replica becomes indistinguishable from a person, is it still just a tool—or is it them? “That keeps me awake at night,” he admits. “For now, I see it as an extension. But ask me again in five years.”
A Universal Right
Thomson went further than we think with its vision, thinking about digital replicas as common as setting up a social media account. He envisions a world where no one is forgotten, and our personalities, memories, and experiences can still live on even if we don’t.
“Knowledge preservation shouldn’t be a luxury for the wealthy,” he insists. “Some of the best wisdom I’ve encountered comes from street vendors in Guatemala, farmers in Brazil, and grandmothers with life lessons. We can’t build a world where only the privileged get to preserve their wisdom. That would be a fucking tragedy.”
He also believes democratization will come as the technology scales with it, just as smartphones once switched from executive toys to global essentials. “Eventually, access to digital immortality will become a human right,” he predicts.
The Human Edge
Still, he doesn’t believe humans will become obsolete.
“AI replicas can preserve and scale knowledge, but they can’t generate new experiences. They can’t fall in love, get their heart broken, or stumble into something unexpected in a market in Guatemala,” he says. “Humans will always be the source of new wisdom. The future isn’t humans versus AI—it’s humans enhanced by AI.”
From Hospitality to High Tech
Thomson’s trajectory towards AI wasn’t straight. Before founding Sensay, he worked in hospitality, finance, and crypto, each of those industries, letting a mark on him.
“In restaurants, you learn customer service and how to stay calm when everything’s going to shit. Finance gave me the tools to analyze risks. Crypto taught me how to deal with volatility and regulation,” he says. “All of it feeds into how I run Sensay.”
Now, as a CEO, he focuses on product vision, fundraising, partnerships, and delegating the rest to a distributed global team. “The key is systems, not micromanaging,” he says. “And if we ever face a crisis, I’ll fight like hell to protect the core team. But I won’t bullshit them either—honesty is non-negotiable.”
The Rebel Mission
At its core, Sensay is both a business and a rebellion against mortality itself. “We’re all going to die. Most of what we know, the wisdom we’ve collected, dies with us. That’s unacceptable,” Thomson says. “If we can stop that, if we can preserve the best parts of ourselves for future generations, then that’s a world worth building.”
And for Dan Thomson, who watched his grandmother’s stories slip away like sand through fingers, the mission isn’t abstract. It’s personal.
