Your team used to know who to ask. Now everyone asks the AI. You’re losing something you won’t get back.
The technical term for it is transactive memory. We know it as “who knows what”. It’s a mental directory, which exists both at the individual and organizational level, of which person to go to for which knowledge or problem.
When everyone asks the AI instead of each other, the team stops building the map of who knows what. Nobody learns that Sarah understands the legacy billing system or that Mark remembers why that architecture decision was made. The AI becomes the single point of contact for all knowledge, and the human network that used to route questions disappears.
Transactive memory makes teams resilient. When someone leaves, the team knows what knowledge walked out the door. The company AI will answer the questions. But it can only give you text. What’s gone are the relationship, the mentorship and the judgment that turns knowledge into wisdom.
There are no dashboards for this.