Bio: David Thul is a petroleum geologist that builds AI to augment subsurface workers. He started using data science to support exploration and production work 15 years ago. In his career, he has run a multi-million dollar upstream research group, raised and deployed PE capital for oil and gas exploration, marketed and sold private drilling deals, and most recently bootstrapped Geolumina from initial concept to implementation at super major oil companies. He holds a BA and MS in Geology and is ABD on his PhD from Colorado School of Mines.

Title: Multimodal AI in Geology: How large language models and computer vision are changing subsurface interpretations

Abstract: ChatGPT is perhaps the most heralded product in the last decade of machine learning. Despite that, only 10% of office workers have adopted it in their workflows and adoption has been even lower among workers in geology. This trend holds and is even more extreme across technology such as computer vision and generative AI where use cases are more vague.

In this talk I will introduce the underpinnings of language models and computer vision and explore use cases relevant to oil and gas. We will look at augmenting data preparation, analyzing cuttings logs and even scaling biostratigraphy interpretation.

I will demonstrate how oil and gas companies can leverage various tools to create their own foundational models, retrain existing models and create unique applications to augment their workforce while increasing value across the organization.