At Topsoe, it's all about courage when AI enters the business

In a world of technology and innovation, there are moments when a seemingly minor development can have a profound impact on industries and society. Back in 1995, Morten Holm Christiansen underestimated the importance of Windows 95 and Internet Explorer, and the impact that technology would have on both businesses and citizens. Today, he is the CTO of world-leading energy transition solutions provider Topsoe and is determined not to make the same mistake of underestimating the impact of AI and generative language models on society and business.

"AI will revolutionize our daily lives as much as the internet has. It is my mission for Topsoe to be at the forefront of implementing the new opportunities so that we can reap both the competitive advantages and the development potential of the technologies" says Morten Holm Christiansen.

Embracing the unpredictable Topsoe's journey into artificial intelligence began with a realization of the unpredictable nature of technological advances, and the decision to embrace AI at Topsoe has not been without its challenges. In particular, questions around data security and privacy have haunted the company, but they have chosen to explore what this transformative technology can offer, says Morten Holm Christiansen.

"AI technology as such is not new, but its availability and applicability to different business domains is revolutionary, and especially the generative language models like ChatGPT have really opened people's eyes to the potential. However, care must be taken when feeding these open models with business-critical data, as it can undermine the very existence of the company. But that should not deter us from testing the technologies in secure environments, so that is the path we have chosen to take."

Championing innovation As Chief Transformation Officer, the responsibility for exploring the potential of AI fell to Morten and his team, where they quickly articulated their vision and mission. To drive this vision, they presented the concept to the company's management and board, encouraging them to envision what AI could become for Topsoe. Emphasis was placed on providing concrete examples rather than a theoretical approach, as it is important to understand the practical applications of the technology. Three specific user cases from the organization were presented:

The first was a completely standardized information search function. Topsoe fed ChatGPT with more than 1,200 scientific articles so that employees and customers can quickly and efficiently search information across complex texts. The second is about using AI for low-level coding and testing. In practical terms, this means replacing complex formulas with text prompts. Finally, the language model has been used to generate summaries and input for presentations of longer texts.

"One of the key principles of our approach to artificial intelligence is learning by doing. While people may read about AI, it takes hands-on experience to understand it. That's why I want to get our employees to start using these features so they can build up the experience they need. For example, we've created a secure environment on our intranet where employees can use ChatGPT and learn more about good prompting and pitfalls of the system. Out of 2,800 employees, we have more than 1,300 active users in there now, so it's a clear success", says Morten Holm Christiansen.

The learning by doing approach also means that there are AI courses for employees every 14 days. The aim is to inspire and engage employees to get started using the technology and think creatively about how it can help in their everyday work.

"There is great value in experimenting with new possibilities, and we have made a clear decision that it is ok to fail or perhaps feel like you are wasting your time along the way.

Because it's not the technology behind AI that will determine our business going forward. It's whether we are good enough to use it creatively, adapt it to our core business and make decisions based on our learning. It's basically about courage", says Morten Holm Christiansen.

Topsoe recommendation: get started Topsoe's recommendation for getting started with the use of AI is to select some concrete projects to test it on, and then go for it. At the company itself, the pilot project consisted of touring the organization with a presentation on the possibilities of AI, and then inviting department heads across the organization to come up with ideas on how AI could benefit their teams and functions. Morten Holm Christiansen's team collected 152 suggestions for using AI, which they then distilled down to nine ideas.

"The possibilities are endless, so we had to zoom in a bit to get started. But it was really interesting to see the many suggestions because it turned out that the whole organization bought into the premise and looked at their processes in new, creative ways. Now we're going to develop solutions and test them on everything from complex production processes, HR functions and sales. One of the elements I'm looking forward to following is the idea of using AI to improve our chances of winning a tender. The technology can't write the tenders for us, but by comparing a number of previously won tenders similar to what we're doing now, it can hopefully identify a pattern of what works well. It's a business area with great potential, and one where we will be able to see the results quite quickly, as we know how high our success rate on tenders is today", says Morten Holm Christiansen.

Topsoe recognizes, that their journey into AI has only just begun and that many have yet to experience its full potential. But with their dedication to experimentation, learning by doing, and implementing concrete tools, they are on track to pursue their goal of becoming the industry leader in the use of AI.