Panelists during the Innovation in Digital Economy Summit 2025 in Doha.
Doha, Qatar: Global investments in AI for the oil and gas sector are expected to amount to approximately $1 trillion by the decade-end, said an official during the second edition of the Innovation in Digital Economy Summit (IDES) 2025.
In a panel discussion entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI): Revolutionising Industries in the Workforce, and Sustainable Development’ experts pointed out the challenges and opportunities of AI in the oil and gas sector.
Naser Al Kuwari, Chairman of Coreinfo Consultancy and a former CEO of Qatar Chemical Company, said “AI is the next revolution. However, AI in the oil and gas sector will have huge challenges alongside its opportunities." He noted that companies are currently investing in the oil and gas sector including Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). Al Kuwari highlighted that by 2030, investments can amount from $100bn to $1 trillion by using AI solutions.
Underscoring the major challenges to AI use in the oil and gas industry, he said cybersecurity tops the list, followed by data quality and legacy systems. “To make these systems smarter, there is a huge investment needed in relation to AI solutions,” Al Kuwari concluded.
Industry leaders also discussed the differences and impact of emerging technologies and machine learning, as well as the role of AI in financial markets, its solutions for sustainable development, and the opportunities that lie ahead for jobs in the digital age.
Emphasising the impact of AI and machine learning, Shama Rahman, Founder and CEO at NeuroCreate, highlighted a study showcasing big data, predictive analytics, and various digital transformation issues.
She said: “Research actually shows that the information flow that you think a human brain might have, will have a lot of hours coming in terms of sensory intake. But it turns out we actually have a lot more information coming from our world models rather than all externalities.”
Roshan Bharwani, CPO and Advisor at NeuroCreate, said 2025 is the year of the AI agents. She said: “The History is that in 2022 November, ChatGPT was released. In 2023, there was an explosion of all kinds of large language models. Last year was all about multimodal AI and various other kinds of generative AI like the image video generation that are AI-generated and then the logical progression now is that from 2025 onwards there is going to be all about AI agents."
The official said that agents will string all of the tasks together and create plans for individuals. This is enabled through ‘perception systems’.
“So they can understand any kind of user input, their environmental context or something that you’re typing on the screen, and also visual input,” she said.
Another key enabler is the ‘reasoning engines’ to plan and strategise. Bharwani added: “This is something that as human beings, we actually take for granted. But actually, there’s a subconscious mind that is planning what is going to be next. Potentially, 40 percent of all knowledge work in large enterprises is going to be done by AI agents. That’s how close we are to this.”
