Sammy Haroon, CEO of AlphaX, discusses: Leadership in the Age of AI: Processes, Culture, and Change exploring the role of leadership in driving AI adoption, building trust, and aligning organizational culture toward responsible and effective AI deployment in the energy sector.
Panel Themes and Takeaways
1. AI Changes How Work Gets Done — Not Just How Fast
A consistent theme across the panel was that AI does not simply automate tasks. It reshapes workflows, compresses timelines, and reduces the number of decision handoffs.
Panelists discussed how multi-month analytical cycles are collapsing into near-real-time decision support.
The implication raised repeatedly: process change precedes culture change, not the reverse.
AlphaX perspective (Sammy Haroon): In upstream and subsurface workflows, AI forces a collapse of traditional review chains into fewer, higher-accountability decision points.
2. Real AI Value Is Measured in Decision Quality and Speed
Panelists converged on the idea that AI success should not be measured by models deployed or dashboards built, but by faster, higher-confidence decisions.
Examples ranged from drilling and production optimization to portfolio and capital allocation.
Several speakers emphasized measurable outcomes: reduced uncertainty, improved asset performance, and economic uplift.
AlphaX perspective: AI creates value when it reduces uncertainty early enough to change a decision—not when it merely confirms one.
3. AI Augments Expertise — It Does Not Replace It
Across operators, service companies, and technology providers, the panel emphasized that AI does not eliminate domain expertise.
Instead, AI removes low-leverage intermediary work: manual analysis, repetitive interpretation, and slow consensus loops.
Subject-matter experts remain essential, but their role shifts toward judgment and oversight.
AlphaX perspective: AI increases expert leverage by removing redundant workflow layers, not by replacing engineering judgment.
4. Leadership Accountability Remains Central
A closing theme of the panel was that AI does not absolve leadership responsibility.
Autonomous and agent-based systems still require human accountability.
Transparency, explainability, and governance were repeatedly cited as prerequisites for trust and adoption.
Panel consensus: AI accelerates insight; leaders remain accountable for outcomes, risk, and capital decisions.
FAQ — Additional Panel Topics
How does AI impact workforce skills?
Panelists highlighted the need for AI literacy rather than widespread model development skills, alongside continuous learning and cross-disciplinary thinking.
What slows enterprise AI adoption in the energy industry?
Key barriers discussed included data quality, siloed organizations, resistance to change, and lack of clear economic success criteria.
Is AI following a hype cycle?
Several speakers noted that AI adoption in energy is paced by organizational readiness and risk tolerance, not declining technical value.
Related AlphaX Capabilities
Several themes discussed during the IPTC panel—workflow compression, uncertainty reduction, and accountable AI—are reflected in how AlphaX deploys AI in production environments.
More on AlphaX's enterprise approach to AI-enabled decision support can be found here: alphaxds.com/enterprise/