From Roughnecks to Robots – The Next AI Trend

In the early days of oil drilling, roughnecks measured their experience by the number of fingers still attached to their hands.

Most oil wells were dug or chiseled with picks and shovels… And companies thought protecting their equipment was more important than protecting their men.

Worker safety was so unimportant that injuries and deaths weren’t even tracked before the 1880s.

For roughnecks – the guys who handle drill pipes and maintain the rigs – the risks were plentiful. Over the long term, toxic air filled their lungs and caused cancer… And deadly fires and explosions were always an imminent threat.

In 1890, for example, 20 dockworkers died when lamps ignited fumes from an oil tank at a refinery in Chicago.

Now, a lot has changed in the last century. Oil rigs tower 2,000 feet above the ocean floor, and the U.S. pumps out 12.9 million barrels of oil per day.

It’s a far cry from 1859, when Edwin Drake first struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. That year, the U.S. produced just 2,000 barrels – in total.

But one thing hasn’t changed: Oilfields are still deadly.

Oil and gas extraction is one of the most dangerous industries in the world. In recent years, the U.S. oil industry has averaged 24.2 deaths per 100,000 workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s 6.5x higher than the national average, which is 3.7 fatal work injuries per 100,000 workers.

And, despite more than 100 years of tech advancements, many of the original dangers still exist.

The Deepwater explosion in 2010 is a prime example. It killed 11 of the 126 workers onboard – and the resulting oil spill cost an estimated $65 billion to clean up.

Here’s why I’m telling you this…

The energy industry has always been built around one assumption: that humans have to be there. It’s been that way since Drake struck oil in 1859.

But that assumption is now breaking – thanks to the most revolutionary tech trend of our day: Artificial intelligence (AI).

From Lab to Real Life