{"id":50226,"date":"2018-09-24T15:18:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T15:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/?p=419187"},"modified":"2018-09-24T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T15:18:12","slug":"how-ai-is-building-better-gas-stations-and-transforming-shells-global-energy-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/09\/24\/how-ai-is-building-better-gas-stations-and-transforming-shells-global-energy-business\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI is building better gas stations and transforming Shell\u2019s global energy business"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In one part of the solution, they applied a machine teaching framework<\/a> developed by Bonsai, which was acquired by Microsoft last summer<\/a>, that allows subject matter experts with little background in data science or AI to tell the system what it wants the intelligent agent to do and what key information it needs to know to do that job successfully.<\/p>\n

This Microsoft team works on combining this subject matter expertise with deep reinforcement learning<\/a> \u2014 a branch of AI that enables models to learn from experiences much like a person does, rather than from meticulously labeled data.<\/p>\n

The Bonsai platform performs much of the machine learning mechanics in the background \u2014 translating instructions into algorithms, creating neural networks and teaching the model the desired behavior. Using this approach, it produced an intelligent agent that, in a proof-of-concept test, learned how to optimally steer the drill using a simplified simulated 2D virtual well environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat excites us about Bonsai is that it gives us a reinforcement learning platform that allows us to scale quickly and takes away the engineering effort involved in stitching together the open-source capabilities so our data scientists can focus on what they\u2019re best at, which is figuring out what the model needs to do,\u201d Jeavons said. \u201cIt\u2019s early days still, but we\u2019re extremely excited about the potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Improving employee engagement<\/strong><\/h2>\n

But Shell\u2019s digital transformation isn\u2019t just limited to its physical wells, pipelines and plants. It\u2019s also changing the way employees working around the globe communicate with each other.<\/p>\n

When Shell\u2019s internal communications team started looking for ways to boost employee engagement and empower everyone across the organization to share information, they settled on a combination of intelligent tools offered as part of Microsoft Office365<\/a>: Yammer<\/a>, Stream<\/a> and SharePoint Online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leaders started using Stream, an enterprise video service, to connect with employees more authentically and personally. Now, in addition to leadership communications, employees can easily find or create videos to promote safety, share best practices or analyze a successful project. Stream features like automatic closed captioning and deep search ensure communications are accessible and help employees quickly find the most useful content.<\/p>\n

Those videos can be easily posted on SharePoint, a collaboration repository, and Yammer, a corporate social network that allows employees to have conversations with peers across the organization and give leaders insights into what employees are experiencing. More than three-quarters of Shell employees now use Yammer, with an average of 4,000 joining each month. The discussions help unify teams that are dispersed across the globe, solve problems together and foster open communication between groups that had little contact before.<\/p>\n

For instance, employees working the night shift on a rig off the cost of Australia might use Yammer to alert the incoming crew to any issues they\u2019ve experienced, and they can now ask if someone working at another location around the world might have a solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese tools allow people to connect with each other, to learn from each other, to see opportunities quicker and build off of each other\u2019s skills,\u201d Sebregts said. \u201cI lead a global organization, and in the past someone doing my type of job might travel around the world and hold a traditional town hall everywhere and once a quarter they would send an email with some thoughts. This is a new era of communication \u2014 it\u2019s open, instantaneous, it\u2019s modern, it\u2019s fast, and I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jennifer Langston writes about Microsoft research and innovation. Follow her on Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In one part of the solution, they applied a machine teaching framework developed by Bonsai, which was acquired by Microsoft last summer, that allows subject matter experts with little background in data science or AI to tell the system what it wants the intelligent agent to do and what key information it needs to know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[135,50],"class_list":["post-50226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-recent-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}