Companies are moving AI into physical operations and deciding which projects justify the investment. Occidental Petroleum’s Chief AI Officer describes how Oxy runs hundreds of AI systems and offers practical advice.

Companies in oil and gas and other asset-heavy industries are applying AI to physical operations, from live camera feeds to predictive equipment maintenance. Patrick Bangert leads Occidental Petroleum’s Applied AI Center of Excellence, which oversees hundreds of AI projects, most of them built on machine learning and computer vision instead of large language models. His book Leading Enterprise AI Programs describes how to organize AI teams to deliver business value.

Key points:

Most of Occidental’s AI runs on classic machine learning and computer vision, while generative AI handles different tasks such as enterprise search.
A credible AI business case shows a material return for the business, but a few minutes saved per employee does not meet that bar.
AI initiatives succeed or fail on adoption: whether the people who do the work want the tool and can use it day-to-day.

Asset-heavy companies are scaling enterprise AI beyond the office and into the field, where it monitors equipment, predicts failures, and guides operating decisions. Their leaders face the usual questions: which projects to fund, what a business case has to show, and how to get field staff to use what the AI team builds. Patrick Bangert is Chief AI Officer at Occidental Petroleum, where his team runs more than 200 AI use cases at once across the company’s global operations.

CXOTalk episode 932 examines how Oxy chooses, builds, and deploys AI in its physical operations.

What we will cover:

What AI does at Occidental today, from cameras in the field to enterprise search
How Oxy decides which of hundreds of candidate AI projects to build first
What makes a real and compelling business case for AI
How to get engineers and operators to adopt and use the systems the AI team builds
Advice for leaders on scaling enterprise AI from pilot projects into production
The obstacles leaders will face on the way to production, and how to overcome them

Episode Participants

Patrick Bangert is the Chief of Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics at Occidental Petroleum, where he leads a global cross-functional team to improve physical and human processes by leveraging advanced analytics and AI.

Michael Krigsman is a globally recognized analyst, strategic advisor, and industry commentator known for his expertise in business transformation, innovation, and AI leadership.

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Occidental Petroleum’s Chief AI Officer: AI at Scale in the Physical World