CEOInterviews.AIRichard Donaldson on conversational AI
From When AI Meets Infrastructure with Duke Energy SVP & CIO Richard Donaldson · · Enterprise AI Innovators
“We built a conversational AI tool that pulls answers from over 800 data sources to transform our regulatory workflows. What used to take days now happens in seconds.”
On , Richard Donaldson, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer at Duke Energy, spoke about conversational AI during When AI Meets Infrastructure with Duke Energy SVP & CIO Richard Donaldson on Enterprise AI Innovators.
About Richard Donaldson
Richard Donaldson, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Duke Energy, discussed the company's use of artificial intelligence in a September 2025 episode of the podcast Enterprise AI Innovators. He stated that Duke Energy spent over a year on governance, security, and platform readiness before deploying any AI tools. Donaldson described a conversational AI tool that, according to him, pulls answers from over 800 data sources and has reduced regulatory workflows from days to seconds. He also said that one generative AI project related to nuclear relicensing documents saved 200,000 hours. Donaldson characterized AI as a data problem and said that the ability to enable transformation for business partners is how companies should measure a CIO's success in the AI era. He noted that the energy industry is collectively looking at how to meet the increased power demand from AI. Donaldson also discussed the potential for AI to take action, comparing it to self-driving cars, and predicted that within 15 years, personal health data collection will change drastically. He described the current period as "the best time in the world to be a CIO at a utility."
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