Where are we in this journey where energy, AI and digitalisation mesh together?
Saravan I think the topic is red hot. AI is everywhere, but particularly in the energy industry. We have far gone the stage of innovation. We are, right now, at the stage of scaling and very soon you will see the stage of Agentic AI.
AI in energy started as an augmented intelligence to give us better insights.
But then slowly it moved into autonomous operations, where you can actually see the operations being tackled by AI at the site without any human intervention. What we are seeing right now is this accelerating, meaning we have gone forward to the stage of robotic process automation. Right now, you can have agents at every point of the energy value chain, right from subsurface interpretation and all the way to the transportation piece. This trend is becoming a reality.
We at AIQ have already done this and are doing this as we speak in our own group of companies.
James We’ re on the cusp of a revolution and that AI in energy could be as important as the invention of electricity in the first place. AI is used extensively at the moment in forecasting, trading and in optimising the grid on the utilities side, it’ s also optimising batteries. We’ re past the proof of value stage.
Anant There’ s a lot of resonance in terms of what the opportunity is, but I first want to come from the perspective of the industry. Why do this? What’ s the outcome and the value of doing this? It’ s a great buzzword and folks in technology can get very excited to take the next level of innovation, but it’ s about increasing the throughput and productivity of our energy assets.
The world needs a lot more energy and therefore the more you can do with what you have, the better. Safety is very, very important. I think the one thing that is not recognised more deeply and it gets a lot lost in the debate is why do it? Skills shortages are also why you need it. This is not about AI replacing humans, but AI truly augmenting humans.
Today, with the support of AI, you can have an operator with two years of experience operate like one which seems like it has 20 years of experience – and therefore creating that capability to bring a lot more people into the workflow.
Finally, I think AI aids innovation. With the energy transition, a lot of new opportunities are opening up and the use of AI can accelerate the different pathways that you can look at, both with the existing energy assets and the new ones that are coming through.
68 April 2025