Oil and gas giant BP will use artificial intelligence to speed up decision-making for its engineers, after signing a five-year deal with US spy technology firm Palantir.
The British company plans to use large language models to automatically analyse data from its sites and produce advice to help humans reach conclusions.
He New deal It builds on a decade-long partnership during which Palantir technology has been used to create a “digital twin” of BP’s oil and gas operations, including at the Khazzan gas fields in Oman and on offshore oil platforms in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico, the site of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster on a BP well.
The companies said the existing partnership had helped improve performance and that the new software was designed for “safe and reliable deployment of AI” and to “protect against hallucinations.” This is a reference to how generative AI models have in the past presented false or fabricated claims as fact as a result of problems with the data they are trained on or how they combine that information, a phenomenon called hallucination.
The use of generative AI is becoming more common across all sectors, from adapting the language used to address customers at Marks & Spencer to helping researchers and writers. The debate over whether AI will replace or enhance existing jobs continues.
Sunjay Pandey, BP’s senior vice president for digital delivery, said: “Using advanced digital twin simulations helps us safely monitor and optimise various aspects of the production process to improve operational performance. We look forward to building on the advances we have made over the years.”
Palantir’s Matthew Babin said its technology “offers the opportunity to help accelerate human decision making on top of the robust digital twin and deep operational workflows already in place.”
The tech firm won a five-year contract last year to create a massive data platform for the NHS, a move that raised concerns about the privacy of patients’ medical details.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder and chairman of Palantir, backed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and the company is known for working closely with intelligence agencies and military organizations, including the CIA and the UK Ministry of Defense.
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BP is strengthening its technology under Murray Auchincloss, the chief executive who took over after Bernard Looney’s shock departure last year. The £66bn company struck a deal last month with US space agency Nasa to share its technology and experience gained working “in hostile environments”.
In 2019, the company invested $5m (£3.8m) in Belmont Technology to accelerate its AI platform, nicknamed Sandy.
