source ENB
What is AI? More importantly, why is everyone already suffering from “AI Fatigue”? This is an entertaining talk about AI in the oil and gas market. I did not know that I was subconsciously tired of AI. I can barely spell it, let alone know I am tired of it. I know that a day of reckoning is approaching for those who do not embrace AI and also for those who use an Excel spreadsheet and claim it is AI.
Sharon Muniz, CEO and Founder of NCN Technologies stopped by the podcast, and we had an absolute blast talking about AI and the energy market. Sharon is a real industry leader in implementing AI and answered all of my questions, even those I had not even considered. I guess that is because she and her staff are used to looking at the entire business process and planning for the unexpected.
If you miss the AI bus or train, don’t worry; it will back up and run over you. Me, I would rather get prepared.
Sharon will be at NAPE, and we are looking forward to a live podcast from the NAPE floor and introducing her to the other great podcasters there. Thank you for stopping by the ENB podcast, I had an absolute blast! – Stu.
Highlights of the Podcast
01:29 – AI Fatigue
04:13 – Importance of AI Security
06:46 – Implementing AI in Large Organizations (Oil and Gas)
08:29 – AI in Compliance with Energy Sector Regulations
12:02 – AI in Regulatory Compliance and Legal Document Analysis
14:58 – Integrating AI into Enterprise Application Development
16:22 – Motivation and Driving Forces Behind Sharon Muniz’s Leadership
18:39 – Strategic Implementation of AI Across Organizations
19:31 – Tailoring AI Solutions for Underserved Markets and Smaller Businesses
21:36 – Addressing Ethical Considerations in AI Programming
22:55 – Utilizing AI in Business Operations
24:36 – Making AI Accessible for Businesses of All Sizes
27:35 – Encouraging Businesses to Embrace AI for Positive Transformation
Follow Sharon on her LinkedIn HERE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonmuniz/
Check out NCN Technologies HERE: https://www.ncntechnology.com/
Other great resources from Sandstone and Energy News Beat
Real Estate Investor Pulse
1031 Exchange E-Book https://alternativeinvestments.sandstone-group.com/en-us/tax-benefits-sandstone-group-0-1-1-0
ENB Top News https://energynewsbeat.co/top-news/
ENB https://energynewsbeat.co/
Energy Dashboard https://app.sandstone-group.com/enb-dashboard-version-2
ENB Podcast https://energynewsbeat.co/industry-insights-2/
ENB Substack
https://theenergynewsbeat@substack.com
– Get in Contact With The Show –
Sharon Muniz Conversations in Energy – Final Cut.mp4
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat podcast. My name’s Du Turley, president CEO of the sandstone Group. And we’ve got a wild show today. Everybody has been talking about AI. AI and your business right now is critical, especially in the energy space in any high tech space. Everybody is high tech now. But I’ll tell you what’s coming around the corner in AI. You gotta have it implemented now and it’s got to be ready. Because if you’re not implemented in AI now, you’re going to have some serious problems in in the energy space. AI security and efficiency is the only way that we are going to get an absolute lower cost energy to all consumers around the world. So buckle up and get ready to talk to Sharon. Months. Sharon, you’re with you’re the CEO and, founder, I think, of CNC technology and AI technology company. Welcome.
Sharon Muniz [00:01:13] Thank you Stu. Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate it.
Stuart Turley [00:01:17] I’ll tell you what, I am so excited. You just mentioned something when we were chit chatting a second ago. I, fatigue. You had mentioned that. Tell me what that means.
Sharon Muniz [00:01:29] So there has been so much talk about AI over the last year, and such a rush to think about how to implement it into organizations that. There’s some fatigue out there around all the conversation, all the thought process. And, I think it’s important for us to understand that, yes, we need to move this forward, but to try not to get overwhelmed about it because it’s not going away. And we just have to take it step by step and continue moving forward as best we can. But yes, with generative AI, there’s so much there that the conversation is just overwhelming people, as is the fear that it’s causing.
Stuart Turley [00:02:10] You know what drives me nuts? And I think why I’m ai fatigued. And that is people are taking a look at Excel and they’re saying we’re using AI. So the misnomer of out there, I mean, you know, the people are like and I’m like, dude, that’s not AI. That’s like macros inside of Excel. Tell me what you’re seeing when when customers come to you and your clients, big clients. I mean, we’re talking big clients that are yours. Yes. What do you look for? How does AI. You have to learn their business, I’m assuming. And, so you got to be a business expert in all these fields. You do military, you do government, you do just about all these huge things, right?
Sharon Muniz [00:02:57] Sure. Yes. So what’s important is to create a blueprint, to create a roadmap and first identify what your organizational goals are and what how will that AI implement it will enhance those goals. So right. Making sure that it aligns with your business. Business goals. Are you looking to save money this year? Are you looking to improve efficiencies? Right? Are you looking to increase sales? Are you looking to improve your marketing? And then starting with the proof of concept, once you identify which one of those areas of the of the organization mostly needs AI and can could benefit from it.
Stuart Turley [00:03:41] So when you you take a look, I’m, I’m a nerd and, you know, back then, you know, nobody the younger generation don’t even know what a nerd is. They think it’s pocket protector and goofy. Right? Wait a minute. Maybe I am, but, working in the server space for as long as I have and and everything else, you have to know security with AI, and your company knows security. So if people are thinking of AI without security, that’s a disaster, isn’t it?
Sharon Muniz [00:04:14] Well, there’s so many different ways to look at securing your organization. Servers. That’s a whole different conversation with that AI, because eyes are going to is able to spin up your servers and get them going. And that’s, that’s it’s going to automate a lot of processes that are currently being done manually. And that would be one of them. From a security standpoint, there’s so many great security companies out there that are already protecting organizations on different levels. And what I would be doing if I was a, an executive at one of those organizations is talking to my security companies and saying, how are you using AI to combat the bad guys that are also using AI to try to. Attack our companies? So, yeah. So those, those knowledgeable security companies are the ones who are actively looking at, at AI and how to protect us.
Stuart Turley [00:05:14] You know, explain for me in just a little bit, if you don’t mind, the difference between just a plain bot in AI because I’ve automated between disparate systems, like taking, information from the oil pads, from blood labs, you know, and helping automate businesses. And it’s not AI, it’s just a basic bot that, you know, you go to a server and it goes there. What’s the difference on AI versus a regular bot? Does that make sense?
Sharon Muniz [00:05:44] Yes. So AI is really beneficial for organizations that have large amounts of data. Right. So if you’re just going to and you’re integrating a bar, I’m guessing you’re talking about like a chat bar or some kind of.
Stuart Turley [00:06:02] A more advanced than that. Yeah, yeah.
Sharon Muniz [00:06:05] But or something. Right. So AI is actually a tool. That’s it’s a tool. And that tool is going to learn from the data that it’s processing. And then it’s going to start to how you can actually help. It can help you make predictions wrong and analysis and have a different view of the data that because it can crunch the numbers, it can crunch the data so much more than any human being could ever do.
Stuart Turley [00:06:35] Right?
Sharon Muniz [00:06:36] Right. And so having that capability and that tool at your fingertips to make better decisions is exactly what we want our clients to do.
Stuart Turley [00:06:46] Right now, some of your customers are some of the biggest in the planet.
Sharon Muniz [00:06:51] Yes. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:06:54] So you know how the servers go. And when you’re talking about, what do you see coming around in the business side of a. So, there are some trends out there that I’m having a hard time because the discussion points are so disparate. You know, our politicians. I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not a fan. And they don’t know. They just. They can barely spell AI, right? So what are some of the things you’re seeing coming around the corner? Because in the financial institutions, it’s huge.
Sharon Muniz [00:07:31] Yes. And and and oil and gas. One of the biggest things to contend with right now is policies and governance. If you’re not strategically looking at, you’re going to be implementing governance and policies in your organizations around I definitely behind the curve. You got to start somewhere where and communicate that information extremely effectively, not just always, but also to your, clients and citizens. And the reason that’s so important is that we have open generative AI systems that if you take some contract language or IP information and you pop it in there and that can that’s already happening. That data is out there for the world to see. Now that’s a security issue, right? So if you don’t have some of those policies and governance in place, and make sure that people are following those.
Stuart Turley [00:08:26] Then there.
Sharon Muniz [00:08:29] Are problems.
Stuart Turley [00:08:30] You know, what’s kind of frightening is the, legislation through regulatory actions that are going on in all energy sectors, the the Biden administration is absolutely crippling when solar, oil and gas, nuclear and, they are absolutely regulating everybody. And here’s where I think it’s going to get really crazy is the EPA has put out some serious, methane, regulatory issues. And oil and gas could sure use your help in trying to make sure that they meet these regulatory issues. So right now with all that, because that is that’s money savings that you’re talking about to the bottom line on. Yeah. Oh I for what you guys do. Is that a fair statement?
Sharon Muniz [00:09:25] Absolutely. And something that these organizations that companies could do is take all these regulatory contracts that are are new regulatory issues that are coming through and targeted. Where do you want to be or what’s your goal? Where is theirs? And it’ll read through so much data so fast and you can have it pick up keywords. So we’re seeing that in vendor management, procurement management where the, loads and loads of contracts that are huge contracts. Instead of having some individuals read through all of these long, long contracts, you can run them through first, the AI system and have it catch certain keywords, information and and have the individuals that are monitoring it and reviewing it go straight to that data. Right. So if I was looking at regulatory documentation and I was very interested in certain things that were going to impact my organization, I would ask the AI tool, show me all the things in this 500 page document that are specific around this, right? And you can start to train it. To find other, other details. And. Yeah, it’s it’s a very helpful way of staying ahead of all those regulatory issues. I mean, right, you’re paying if you’re paying a lawyer, how many hundreds of dollars an hour, $1,000 an hour. And you can get that lawyer to do it now in three hours instead of 300. You’re saving yourself a ton of money, and you’re possibly giving that lawyer really good information about where to find the data that they need.
Stuart Turley [00:11:08] Wow. My team really did a great job taking the regulatory things in Colorado. And they had the ESG things, all lined up. And so Colorado oil and gas got shut down, for, a year, whatever the number was, because they didn’t even know the, the agent, the agency didn’t even know their own rules for ESG because you had to go in and figure all these things out, and we were able to do it. It was manual. We were able to help BDC get their first oil wells approved for drilling in order to get these things done. It was a pain and it was expensive.
Sharon Muniz [00:12:02] Yes, very much so. So that’s a perfect example where I can be used, to read documentation, pull that information that you need and make that job go much faster. We really I mean, yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:12:17] We had to pull from, block groups from the Census Bureau. Then we had to go to, well, data loggers, then we had to go here, and it was painful. And then you then you had to come up with an ESG plan where you had to go around and knock on doors and make sure that that you found out how many cars were in each one, what language was spoken, how many feet away from the well pad it was going to be? It was just shoot me in the foot.
Sharon Muniz [00:12:53] And there is going to be certain there are going to be areas. I mean, we still need human interaction, right? And absolutely, I want to make sure that that’s very clear. I feel like what we should be doing with AI is empowering our people, empower our citizens using this tool. Great to get ahead and and educating them as we’re being educated on all the ways we as organizations and agencies want to use the, the, the tool. How do we empower our team members? And there’s there’s a broad range of ways companies are doing that. I mean, some people are very scared and they’re not they’re saying do not use it whatsoever. Some are in the middle and some, like myself, are saying, you do your job. I, I trust the way you do your job every day. If you see or know of an AI tool that’s going to help you do your job better.
Stuart Turley [00:13:50] Right?
Sharon Muniz [00:13:51] Bring it to me. Let’s talk about it. How are we going to integrate that? Because there’s hundreds of AI products coming out every day on the market. And I can give you an example of of what our team did. That that I love this example. We build software application, we do enterprise application development. And with that we do a tremendous amount of documentation. I can help and we do a lot of video with that documentation on how to use the product. So we did an inventory app for a client and they were going to data. And so we were able they the team found an AI tool where we could ingest information about the product and how to use it. And then it created this beautiful documentation that we could serve up to the beta testers on how to install their inventory apps and how to load, the inventory. Saved us a lot of time and saved our clients a lot of money and. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:14:58] So if you ever if you ever heard the story, consultants never eat their own dog food. We are so strapped sometimes that we, we give great service to our clients, but sometimes we don’t do the best for ourselves. And, boy, that would. You’re finding an AI application to help your clients. So you are eating your own dog food.
Sharon Muniz [00:15:22] And definitely are. And we’re I feel like I’ve now empowered our team members to have that knowledge and be able to go find other ways to improve our business and improve how our clients, you know, and results turn out.
Stuart Turley [00:15:41] Wow.
Sharon Muniz [00:15:42] Yeah. It’s just I think there’s I think that also helps with that fatigue. Right? I’m not fatigue because I know my team members are also out there looking for ways to make their jobs more efficient. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s you’re not going anywhere. If anything, I want to know, how are you? And you know what? They can take that knowledge to the next level wherever they end up going. If they don’t stick with NASA and, you know, for 30 years or whatever.
Stuart Turley [00:16:09] You know, my hat’s off to you because you, you have built a heck of a company. And as a woman leader, leading your company, what drives you?
Sharon Muniz [00:16:21] The people.
Stuart Turley [00:16:22] Oh.
Sharon Muniz [00:16:25] My people and my clients. I, I wanted to create a an organization that was like a community. And, our clients, I think, feel it. They know it. They know how much we we care about them and how hard we work for them. And then our team members are just all in, and. But giving your team members the right tools to do the job properly is extremely is, for me, one of the most important things. And that’s where technology steps in. Because, if you’re not giving your team members the right tools, it’s just so much harder and, and, to get everything done. One thing that I am concerned about in the US is that we are not. It’s it’s. All this generative AI talk. I’m concerned that our country could stay behind if we don’t. Truly. Strategically start implementing it through our companies and organizations across the US, especially small and medium businesses. The large guys have a lot of money to implement and start using it. I went to a conference a few months ago with women owned businesses, and some people, they’re like, we don’t use it at all.
Stuart Turley [00:17:47] Right.
Sharon Muniz [00:17:48] And I was concerned that they weren’t even playing around with it or investigating how they could use it in their organizations. It was not even on the horizon for them. And that. Globally, competitively. We need tips to have the conversation and start understanding how we can use this tool. Because it’s so powerful. It’s it’s the internet. You know, when the internet hit, everyone’s like, this is going to change the way we do everything. And we didn’t know what was going to come. And now look at us talking here, having this wonderful conversation.
Stuart Turley [00:18:22] Isn’t it great?
Sharon Muniz [00:18:23] In ten years from now, AI is going to change everything, right? And globally, technology is just really well used. And so we need to stay stay ahead of that as well.
Stuart Turley [00:18:39] Well, I’ll tell you what, Sharon, that is absolutely a huge point that we are going to step behind. But let me talk about underserved markets for half a second. You do enterprise wide solutions. Is it easy because the you just mentioned the smaller businesses. And it doesn’t matter. Women owned or men, it doesn’t matter if it’s small cap, you know, and those things, they can’t afford what the big boys can afford. Right. And and so are your solutions capable? Let’s say there is a, midstream operation or a, wind farm or something out there. Can you tone down your services for these folks? Because a lot of folks, you can’t.
Sharon Muniz [00:19:31] And yes, absolutely those can. A blueprint is a blueprint, right? And we want to fit it into your organizational structure at no matter what size you’re at. And that’s one of the things that I feel is super important for all organizations. Whether her ten man company or your 10,000 person firm or 100,000 person firm, you really need to, start thinking about how to integrate it into your company. Whether that’s like, there’s it easy proof of concepts out there. Marketing. Marketing is the first and easiest way to involve it into your organization. And, this but it has to align with your values. Here’s another, I have an I have another story for you.
Stuart Turley [00:20:17] Okay.
Sharon Muniz [00:20:18] So. You know sales is is is very people heavy. You need to have people to make sales. So one of my coworkers said to me, Sharon, take a look at this AI tool. It can make the sales call get you booked. You’re not a no person. Good eye. So I said, oh, let me take a look at this. You know, it’s I don’t like to shy away from anything, and it’s just an opportunity to learn whether you’re going to use it or not. So I played with a tool. And it sounded like a real person calling you, asking questions, responding properly. But guess what? It did not fit into our core values because I felt, and I’m not judging anyone who’s using something like that. I’m just saying that in Nissan’s core values, I felt like we would be. Not. It’s. Unless we said, hi, this is an AI tool and then starting the questions. But if you’re not going to be open and honest about. This is not a real person calling you and talking to you and asking for x, Y, and Z. That didn’t go along with our core values, right? It felt like that. You’re kind of like anyways, so that that was so we didn’t we haven’t used it. We have real people calling and talking to people about our services. But, but it is coming our way. And that’s why we’re getting so many calls now from robots.
Stuart Turley [00:21:57] And let’s say I’m a customer, and and I come to you and I say, what about AI programing? Because you got us started somewhere. Ethics. You brought up a huge issue. I’ve shut down, LinkedIn and and not LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook because of their inability or lack of desire to stop child pornography and encourage it. And if you’re not going to stop it, you’re encouraging, in my opinion.
Sharon Muniz [00:22:30] All right.
Stuart Turley [00:22:31] How do you instill the learning process of AI, of what you just said? Sharon? That’s critical. That’s a fear for me.
Sharon Muniz [00:22:43] Yes. That that boils down to your policies and governance. You’re writing those that policy and those governance, documents are aligning strategically with your values and your company’s, goals. So. If it doesn’t align, then you don’t want to implement it, you don’t want to do it. And so, or you shut it off if it starts to do something like you’re bringing up. A topic that, you know, obviously, I would imagine. It’s their values. They’re not stopping it. Then that’s their value system, which is actually very sad. But it all boils down back to your governance and policies. Now what I have seen what we have done for clients as well, which is so cool, is that we’ll take a product and then that product is is a fantastic solution for industry. And now with AI, the data that’s gathered from that product or that’s being used from that product, we can integrate an AI tool and have the reporting better, have the predictions better. So bringing AI in to augment an already built solution is what everybody’s doing. You look at a CRM system, Salesforce, QuickBooks, they’re all integrating AI now. And if you’re looking for a simple way to start implementing AI in your organization, talk to your current vendors. How are they using AI? How can I use it to improve my business? And that’s that’s a first step. And that’s easy. That’s not that’s that’s just having a conversation with your preferred vendors.
Stuart Turley [00:24:36] But sure, you’re incredibly busy and that just, you know, I’m, I’m kind of busy, too, but, let’s say I’m an a oil exec. Energy exec, if I’m any, any market, underserved market. Are you available? Do you have a good team? Somebody calls in. How do they find these answers to questions? Does that make sense?
Sharon Muniz [00:25:00] Yes, absolutely. We have free consultations and San technology.com, is our website. And and as a Nancy season cat and as a Nancy, I always spell that out that way. National consulting Nova. So we, very much like to have consultations as one sure doesn’t fit all folks, right? Doesn’t fit everyone. So, you we would like to understand what their goals are, what they’re trying to achieve. Where are they on a maturity level? That’s another thing you can measure. Some people are here, some are just starting out. Some people are pretty nice on that maturity level. Right. Yeah. They’ve started integrated. They’ve they’ve assigned someone in their organization to be responsible for it. I think it’s the same as anything. You got to you got to assign someone, you got to measure and track, and see if it’s successful or not, and then pivot if it’s not.
Stuart Turley [00:25:58] Wow. You know what? You know, it’s kind of cool. And, we’ve had a couple dog, and it is so fun. Every box I throw at you for a business ROI statement, you know, visiting with you and I because it scares me to death, to be honest with you. You’ve answered every one of them, no matter thought of it. That’s no big deal. Thought of it? No big deal. That’s pretty darn cool, I appreciate that.
Sharon Muniz [00:26:25] I don’t know, I, I, we, we try hard to get to what we’ve learned a lot. Let’s just say that that’s all through learning and understanding and and studying and reading and try to stay ahead of the curve so that our clients don’t have to because there is so much to ingest. I feel like having a having a preferred vendor that really understands AI and can walk you through all of those, the different paths and options, right? It’s beneficial. I mean, at the end of the day, it will save you time. It will save you money. That’s that’s what it’s or you’re going to be left behind in your competition is but I don’t think it should be fear. There is a lot of fear, Stu. Like, if there is a lot of fear around a fear of jobs being taken away. And it is changing. I mean, it’s going to change our industry tremendously with software development. It’s already changing it the way we do things right, the way we develop. But the human interaction is the most important. I mean, humans, that’s the best part of working is the is the people. Right. Have you have you implemented AI? I’m going to put you on the spot in your organization. Any capacity?
Stuart Turley [00:27:36] I’m well, sure. Thanks for asking a very painful question. I don’t use it, but, the team will go get AI, and when we transcribe our articles, we, they go ahead and put it in, and then AI does a great job figuring out which will be best to go viral. Which will go to this in on our energy side, we got to the point where we had 26 million visitors on our site this year. We had 7.5 million. Article reads of the transcription. We had over a million downloads of the pod. Cast through the channels, and we broke the code on how to get podcast out. Because sure, people, there’s a way to get out there that everybody goes, I’m going to put a podcast that nobody knows how to find it. And they get for four listens. It’s like, now wait a minute. So yes, we are using I, me, I can’t even type I so it it goes back to your comment, Sharon you got to have great people.
Sharon Muniz [00:28:50] You have to have a great people and empower them to be able to use and find the tools that they need.
Stuart Turley [00:28:56] All right. Last word. Give us your thoughts for the day. And what’s next for in.
Sharon Muniz [00:29:03] That’s for the day. Are. Don’t hold back. Look. Look into. I don’t let it scare you. Take it a day at a time and look at it as a way to enhance our nation.
Stuart Turley [00:29:18] Yep.
Sharon Muniz [00:29:21] Business by business, agency by agency. It’s here to stay. And it’s something that can really lift us up. And how can we do that with AI?
Stuart Turley [00:29:30] Fantastic. I’ll tell you, this has been such a joy to visit with you. And in our. I am such a nerd about elevating, humanity out of energy, poverty and poverty that I think that with the proper knowledge and implementation, I can actually make a difference in lowering the cost of energy. oh. Yeah. And I think you brought up a point that I just didn’t even think of today, and that was being able to work within the legislation through regulatory processes that are being imposed on all energy right now in AI. And, holy smokes, Batman, thank you so much for stopping by the podcast today.
Sharon Muniz [00:30:17] Thank you so much for having us on and having me on. So I really.
Stuart Turley [00:30:22] Well, I hear a true CEO says us.
Sharon Muniz [00:30:26] So it really is. So we are a team and I’m thankful for I’m of the best team.
Stuart Turley [00:30:31] Oh. In that. Great. Hey, I’ll see you next time. Did you and I are going to talk again.
Sharon Muniz [00:30:35] So see their name.
Stuart Turley [00:30:37] If you’re if you’re going to be there. I got two other guys as well to be there. So you’re going to stop by the crew truce and interview Ray Trevino and then also visit with David Blackman and then also Jay Young. So we’ve already got three other podcast lined up.
Sharon Muniz [00:30:58] So looking forward to it.
Stuart Turley [00:31:00] Yeah. Buckle up. Sounds great. See you soon.
Sharon Muniz [00:31:05] All right. Take care.
Energy News Beat