The Dutch company Shell is expanding an online program that teaches its employees artificial intelligence skills, to reduce costs, improve business operations and generate revenue. The company said that about 2,000 people demonstrated these courses, about 82,000 employees working for the company, through the online education company Udacity, which includes petroleum engineers, chemists, geophysicists, and others.

Shell courses are optional, and employees can complete them at their convenience during business hours, and the company covers the cost of the training, Shell said. “Artificial Intelligence enables us to process the vast amount of data across all of our businesses to generate new insights that can keep us ahead of the competition,” Yuri Sebregts, the company’s chief technology officer said in an email.

Dan Jevons, general manager of data science at the company said that employees can use artificial intelligence experiences to predict equipment malfunctions and automatically locate areas to reduce carbon emissions, and said machine learning algorithms can help Shell better process seismic data, or geological rock formations data below Earth, which can ultimately accelerate the time it takes to evaluate decisions about where to dig, according to The Wall Street Journal.