Your AI’s Biggest Blind Spot Is The Data You Forgot You Had

Nick Burling, Chief Product Officer at Nasuni.

​Enterprise AI is very good at finding data. That becomes a problem when the enterprise has forgotten that certain data exists within its systems.

Tech leaders are connecting models to knowledge bases and operational systems so AI can answer questions with company-specific context. If only these were neat and tidy environments with carefully curated inputs. The reality is that there are old project folders, former employees’ files, duplicate datasets, archived contracts and years of forgotten departmental data. Some of it is highly sensitive data, and some of it still belongs to someone who left the company five years ago.

Much of that forgotten information falls into the category of dark data: data an organization has collected and retained but no longer actively uses or manages. Before organizations can decide what AI should use, they need a clearer picture of what is already sitting inside the business.

Dark Data Has Become An AI Infrastructure Problem

Historically, dark data was largely a storage and data management concern, creating unnecessary costs and headaches as the data estate expanded.

That calculus changes as AI systems connect to larger pools of internal data. Consider healthcare, where certain records may need to be retained for years to meet regulatory requirements, even as the access model around them becomes outdated. Once AI enters that environment, data preserved for one purpose can influence workflows it was never meant to inform.

The issue is especially difficult with unstructured data, where visibility is often limited. Our research (email required) found that 94% of enterprises struggle with unstructured data, while only 31% centrally manage and enforce agent access.

That gap becomes important when AI can discover data much faster than the business can determine whether that data still belongs in circulation.

AI Can Create Forgotten Data Consequences

Basically, you cannot audit what you cannot see.