‘The risk is moving too slow’: How Oklahoma's government wants AI to reshape the state's economy

‘The risk is moving too slow’: How Oklahoma's government wants AI to reshape the state's economy

From Listen Frontier by The Frontier

January 21, 2026 · 28 min

About this episode

Hart Brown discusses Oklahoma's AI strategy and its potential impact on the state's economy.

Frontier: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of listen frontier today. I am joined by Hart Brown, the president of artificial intelligence and transformation at Saxum. He also helped author Governor Stitt's Artificial Intelligence strategy for the state. Thanks for joining us today. I wondered if you would tell us a little bit first about yourself, your background and how you got involved in this project and in this area. Hart Brown: You bet. Coming out of school, I was doing a lot of work in what we now refer to as predictive analysis, so algorithmic based decision making, using math to help understand what's likely to happen and then make the best decisions you possibly can. I had a number of people come to me and say Hart, can you build an artificial intelligence system that can do what you do on paper in real time? I answered. I said let's find out. It sounds really interesting. At that time, there was really only one system that anybody could really use, and that was IBM Watson. And so I built an artificial intelligence system on top of IBM Watson to be able to leverage this algorithm in real time. And got very good success. Frontier: So let's talk about the governor's…

People in this episode

Guest: Hart Brown

Topics covered

  • artificial intelligence
  • Oklahoma government
  • economic strategy

Keywords

  • predictive analysis
  • algorithmic decision making
  • IBM Watson

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Artificial Intelligence, Watson, IBM Watson

Books & works: Frontier

Places: Oklahoma

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