Enter the “Hive.”

Just outside of Denver, a small team of people oversees Liberty Energy’s entire fleet of fracking operations nationwide, largely to supervise the AI-automated work with human eyes.

Instead of golden honey, the Hive facilitates the churning out of millions of barrels of black gold—the crude oil produced from Liberty’s increasingly AI-dominated hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, that now requires fewer crews and people. Amid lower oil prices and activity levels, those savings are key.

Liberty, founded 14 years ago by President Trump’s new Energy Secretary Chris Wright, is now led by CEO Ron Gusek, as the company has grown into a U.S. fracking leader along with the more household name of Halliburton. The companies are leaning into autonomous, digitalized oilfields for safer, faster, cleaner (on a relative basis) and, ultimately, more cost-efficient work...