AI tool built in N.L. hopes to see use in the oilfield and beyond

A St. John's tech company has launched what it says could revolutionize its core mission through artificial intelligence, and is getting a big financial boost from the oil companies behind the Hibernia and Hebron oil projects.

CoLab Software unveiled ReviewAI on Wednesday, a tool within its software package that can comb through the data and knowledge of past projects to provide insight, improvements and make sure mistakes aren't repeated to help projects get completed faster and smarter.

Adam Keating, CoLab's CEO and co-founder, says he sees the use of AI as an expansion of his mission to help mechanical engineers make better decisions.

"Just to get your perspective on my design could take days or weeks. If you think about how many times that happens in the run of a process to build a project like Hibernia or Hebron or a new vehicle, there are millions of those cycles," Keating said Wednesday.

"If those are weeks, and they should be minutes or hours, it's really slowing down how quickly we can build products."

Keating said the company had the idea for some time, but conversations with ExxonMobil Canada brought the tool into the light. 

The project has created around 20 jobs within CoLab, Keating said.

On Wednesday, ExxonMobil announced a $5.6-million investment in CoLab to focus on software and AI talent development in Newfoundland and Labrador.

WATCH | Learn more about this made-in-N.L. artificial intelligence:

An N.L. tech company has been quietly building AI, funded by the offshore oil industry

11 hours ago

Duration 2:38

CoLab Software has lifted the curtain on ReviewAI, an artificial intelligence tool built in St. John’s and funded by the Hibernia and Hebron projects. The work began quietly about a year ago, now the system is ready to launch just as the AI business is blowing up.

Keating says starting work on the project a year ago puts the company and their product in the drivers seat as other companies are only now beginning to embrace AI.

The tool being kept in house also means that customer data won't be used to train other AI. models, he said.

"Over the last 12 months, we've been building it. And now everybody's talking about it. So it was perfectly timed that we did it back then," he said. 

"We have a really broad vision of where we want to go with this, so I think for us it's just going to be [being] competitive."

Keating said ReviewAI will be a suite of products in the future available through CoLab.

Nicholas MacCallum, research and development manager of ExxonMobil Canada, says the company was attracted to CoLab because their work was solving problems they face with developments of Hebron and Hibernia on a daily basis.

"What we're hoping to achieve through using it is [to] really reduce the amount of time that it takes to do that work," MacCallum said.

"That allows the engineers to work on other things or get on to the next project. So that's really the value that we see in this."

MacCallum says he hopes the investment can serve as a way to stimulate AI development in the province.

"That's talent that's going to be needed for Hibernia and Hebron, but that's also going to be talent that's going to be needed in many industries. Health care, education, everywhere," he said. 

"That was probably one of the leading reasons why we felt it so important to make such a large investment in a project like this."

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