EP 14: Infusing Some AI Into the HVAC Space

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Will smart AI tech finally invade our homes? I'm for it. That's one of the things that we'll be talking about today on Everyday AI, your daily livestream, podcast and newsletter, helping everyday people like you and me understand what's going on in the ever changing world of AI and actually use it. Today we have a very special and unique guest that I think you all are gonna love. We have Rob west, the regional sales director from Armstrong Fluid Technology. Rob, thank you so much for taking some time to join the show.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate you reaching out and having the opportunity to be on here.

All right, let's do it. So first, before we jump into how smart tech may eventually invade our homes and bringing AI into the. Into our homes, let's talk about a couple of the big developments in AI news. So one of the first ones I'd love to talk about is Meta. So the Facebook parent company, they've announced that they're going to start using generative AI to essentially allow companies to run. You know, it'll be millions of tests to see what makes us click, right? What's, what's going to help them sell whatever that they're selling. So, you know, we won't even know that they're using this technology on us, I guess, but it's probably big for the ad industry. Rob, is this, is it creepy? Is it cool? Like, what do you think?

I've always had a more off opinion about it that when it's like click this box for targeted ads, I, if I'm going to watch an ad anyways, it might as well be something I really like. I mean, you might as well pitch me something that is about me whether I want to see it or not. If I have to see it, it might as well be about me. So I like more specific.

I would say I'm, I'm here for that as well. Yeah, I'd rather get more relevant ads, even if it is a little creepy and too relevant. Yeah, so. So yeah, we'll see how that goes with, with Meta testing Generative AI built into their ads tools. The second one, another generative AI story. So a story came out just about the company rewind and they're really making a splash. And a lot of generative AI companies are making a huge splash when it comes to raising money and their valuation. So a lot of venture capital Companies and investors are just looking to invest in any companies that are really into this generative AI space. So that's just, you know, helping people create something with AI. So you know, real quick rewind. As a company, I'd love, I'd love to get the founder on the show, FYI. But it essentially, again, talking about Creepy Rob, like they essentially record everything that goes on on your computer, regardless of what program. But then you can ask it anything that happened, hey, that PDF from three weeks ago, that email from yesterday, that presentation from, from six months ago and just talk to it. So this is, you know, in the way the economy is going right now. This, this article which we'll link to in the daily newsletter is saying that these generative AI being able to raise money at an insane rate. So what's Rob, would you ever use something like that?

I, I need something like that. I have so many documents and PowerPoint and slideshows that I have on my computer. As you're saying this, I'm like, what, what does it cost? I go to look up something, I'm like, I feel like I used it yesterday and it's just gone. Where did I put it? That's all like that. That would be a very. That's intriguing. I do like that. Yeah.

Probably one of the reasons they're already probably going to have a billion dollar valuation before even launching. So our third kind of big story of the day, actually an in depth article in Pitchfork. Again, we'll link this in the newsletter, but saying about how, hey, musicians are already using AI more often than we think we've talked about on the show before. Grimes as an example, said, hey, we'll do a 50, 50 split with anyone who, who does an AI generation of, of, of her music. But you know, this is saying this Pitchfork article is saying it's, it's being used way more than we think it is. And you know, the big companies are already starting to release these tools. I don't think people are using them a lot. So, you know, OpenAI has Jukebox Google just released. You know, Music LM so, you know, being able to take a little text prompt and being able to make a little song or at least, you know, a hook or a melody. Rob, where do you see this going? Is this, is this going to take off or is this going to be kind of dead on arrival?

It's going to depend because of course as a musician, myself, as a drummer, I, I want to do everything myself. But there are plenty of times where we discuss where you get kind of stuck or if you're copying directly somebody else's song, but you don't mean to just because it's stuck in your head. I could definitely see that going in a, in a good direction. That's something I'd like to see where that ends up or how, how much it might be able to take over when we don't even realize in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, it should. Yeah. And apparently it's happening under our nose, so yeah, we'll see. So speaking of, of under our nose, AI, at least according to this new Grandview research study, AI is going to be infiltrating our homes. So this, this new study said that the AI, you know, at home smart AI market is going to balloon to more than $500 billion by 2030, which is just a really jaw dropping amount and crazy growth. I do feel at least right now like AI hasn't at least my home, you know, aside from a nest thermostat or something like that. I don't think AI has really made its way into, into the homes of the most everyday Americans. Rob, this is kind of your, you know, your area. Like what do you see with, with AI, you know, smart homes? Is it going to catch on anytime soon?

I think it's on the manufacturers of equipment to understand the applications that you can actually use this for. You've heard me say before that energy efficiency is, is like the, the key word to the entire states right now is how can I be more efficient with my energy? And, and at the end of the day, aside from whether you like it or don't, I don't want to spend as I want to spend the least amount of money as possible to heat and cool my house. Right. And using an AI type system that can suggest and prompt you how to run your house properly. I actually looked up this morning just H Vac using AI or something on Google and the first article that I could read quickly without actually clicking on it was an AI type service telling you how to run your house more efficiently than you can yourself by suggesting, hey, instead of, as you said, a nest thermostat, kind of. It will learn your schedule in and out of your house and then adjust your temperature accordingly. But we could go much larger than that. As far as, you know, using your electric at the right time of the grid, maybe when the prices are higher or lower, or controlling your humidity at the same time with the energy efficiency in mind. That's a whole smart home could be, you know, affected with your solar panels, could adopt Your H Vac needs up and down as your load would change. As far as the, the energy that's already come into your house and what it cost you, that's a, that's a big way that things can move around. But the energy efficiency market, those who are going to get into that as far as manufacturing is going to be huge to who is going to be the most optimized for this type of technology.

Sure. So Rob, give us, give us a little bit of insight on, you know, exactly what your role is at Armstrong Fluid Technology and then, and then we'll talk a little bit more about some of the use cases that you've been using. But you know, real quick kind of, you know, what's, what's your kind of day to day just so we can, you know, understand some of these applications and use cases that we're going to be talking about.

Yeah, So I work with distribution contractors, rep networks. I work with those individuals to help educate them from here, from Armstrong, what Armstrong's offerings are commercially, even to residentially. And then I am personally taking the task of using, I will say, newer technology. I not to say that I'm the youngest person out there anymore. I was at one time, as we all were, but I've seen continually that older individuals use technology less and less and, and there are those who really do adopt it. And it is quite shocking every time I do find someone that's older, more seasoned, I'll say, and using any type of newer technology. But as the younger generation here is growing up, we are all running and kicking for this kind of stuff and we know how to use this type of stuff and grew up with it and being able to bring that into an industry that heating and air conditioning construction trades in general, I would say are very old school and very slow moving to adopt new technology. And in moving forward that only has to exponentially grow as far as adoption. And that, that'll go hand in hand with, you know, the, the older mindset, retiring, moving out of the workforce and younger people moving in. There's going to have to be an influx of young people. We've been understaffed in this industry for a very long time. And with younger people is going to come more innovative technologies and adopting this is going to hopefully do very, very well in the US here.

Yeah, that's, that's a great point because you know, it's, it's not like everyone, everyone here has the same goal. Right. Like, of course I want to be able to, you know, keep my house at the Right temperature and to be efficient and to not pay more. But you know, when you think of the H Vac industry, you don't think it's, you don't think AI, right. You normally don't put, you know, one and two together there. So I'd really love to hear just a quick story about the first time maybe you said, hey, let's, let's use a little bit of AI in our, in our processes here. Was it, was it hard to convince people or were you just like, all right, I'm just gonna go for this, do it and show people the results?

It's still hard. And I just had a conversation with someone couple weeks ago to be unnamed, that for Armstrong we have pumping technologies, fluid flow, but a pump specifically could be moving hundreds, thousands of tons worth of heating and cooling. For example, my house has 4 tons. So very large applications. And selecting that equipment is very key, especially when you get to that size as far as efficiency standpoint. And we were talking about being able to use an AI service to help select the correct equipment to someone who for example, has no idea what anything is. And it's the trust that that would give you the right feedback because we know with Chat GPT there are times where it gives you a hundred percent correct answer in its own mind that was entirely fabricated and made up and is no truth whatsoever if you ask it the right question in the right way. Of course, right. So to ask something that, to do that. But my follow up immediately to that was you can ask that like if we ask ChatGPT what the correct selection for a certain application in heat and air condition would be, you can ask it to tell you how it got to that solution. It's not a black hole where the answer comes out and you have no way to check up on it. You can just ask how did you get to this answer? So there are even checks in a free open source software that already exists to think of a company being able to apply that. I know here at Armstrong we do have these type of systems where we will optimize your plant efficiency to run your entire commercial space as efficient as possible. Our, our pumps, our newest pump, just being able to run the data off of it and know you have energy in, energy out, understand your pump curves to get very technical very fast. But you can be anywhere from 25 to 65% efficient on your energy consumption. And just imagine being able to have the ability to say, hey, here's where your efficiency is right now by changing out the, the actual pump and technology that you have here upgrading to the Armstrong way, we can give you 50 reduction on your energy bills. That, that is, that is an insane conversation piece. And honestly, when I was recruited for Armstrong to come here first, I thought there is no way that that much efficiency can be saved out of something already. Right. And that was. It's true. I mean I've seen the numbers myself, I've heard the case studies and to bring that down to a residential level is a huge application. I think on the commercial market you see a lot of those, there's a lot of controls, a lot of complicated topics and everything. But on a residential side, the closest to AI we get again is a nest thermostat, an ecobee, some type of wi fi connected thermostat. A whole house solution or even a, a pre installation solution would be really key.

Yeah. Where do you see, you know, whether it's H Vac or just, you know, throughout the home, where do you see the AI industry kind of going in terms of, you know, energy efficiency in the home, whether it's H Vac or not, where do you see it going specifically with AI?

So I know we talked here that I looked up a couple prompt suggestions this morning in preparation for this. A couple for me again, as we're going to have a huge influx of, I'll say new individuals and younger individuals into the heat and air condition industry, we're going to need a lot more information easily accessible from everybody's fingertips. But to use AI is going to be even the, my, my example, I've been saying for probably as long as Chat GPT has been available and I've at least not understood what it is, but at least try to understand what it is. Right, is that we can use this to be like a sales tool almost and not to sell. You know, I'm going to persuade you extra hard into upgrading your H Vac equipment. I want actual data to, for a homeowner to say, hey, this is, this is the most energy efficient product. This will cost you the least amount of money to operate and it will provide you the higher, highest level of comfort and being able to plug and play into an AI that, that will help you generate a proposal. I looked up the contract terms and conditions to help someone write that. It gave me back 10 bullet points which if no one's put into chat GPT, give me the get help me with terms and conditions. That, that was the most informative thing for 90 of all contractors. That should be your first question. And that'll help you the most yeah. And then also I know that there's, you know, ART applications for OpenAI where at the same time you have every house that you walk into or every even commercial plant that you walk into. You're going to have to with most heat and air conditioning if you're putting in something new. The biggest problem most people say is I don't want to see that on my wall. I don't want to have anything change in my environment. So if you could work with an AI to add, you know, registers and vents and grills into the house, a picture already live and maybe, maybe also rearrange the furniture a little bit into the room, I guarantee you no one will notice whatever the heat and air condition system is that you also added to that picture at the same time, it's just a perception of again, it's always done, it's always been done the way it's been done. And that's the only way people want to do things right. It's always work. So I'm going to keep doing it. And people who do adopt an AI are going to push forward instead of if you're sitting still. Obviously we've always said if you're sitting still, you're losing. You have to be pushing forward.

That's, that's a great point. So speaking of that pushing forward and adapting to new technology, you know, as we, as we wind down here on the show. So what's your, you know, you said that you're in an industry that moves a little slower. So what would your recommendations be for everyday people who maybe are in industries that are a little slower moving or what's maybe one or two just practical tips from your own experience of using different AI systems. You know, what's your takeaway to be like, hey, go do this and this will help move things forward a little bit in a slower moving organization.

Yeah. Not to go the simplest answer possible, but I mean I guarantee that I would imagine 95% of everyone in the heat and air condition world alone have not even tried to mess with anything like this. And just to be very simple for chat GPT to, to go on there, create an account, have it, it's nothing, there's nothing fishy about it as far as doing that to my, to my knowledge and start playing around with it, ask it some questions and you're going to see the answers that come back for me were like mind blowing that this, this exists. And as soon as I started asking the more and more questions I did, the more I realized if I'm not using this again. If I'm not using this, I'm falling behind. And again, standing still is great. You can continue to do what you've always done, but everyone else, if they start moving ahead of you above and beyond, you're going to need to move with them. So those who adopt any type of AI technology and adopt the most of it as soon as possible and kind of grow with it are going to be the ones who have the most success in the heat and air condition and construction in general world. Those are going to be the most successful companies and people that have really good understanding of how it works. And you're not going to ask a question that is going to be, you know, you're not going to break any rule, you're not going to chat, GPT is great, you're going to end up with a ton of dead ends. But this one other thing that I had done this morning real quick was I asked it if it could diagnose a fault code on a branded unit of specific. And it gave me the top eight fault codes that, and, and what they mean. I didn't even say, I didn't suggest or ask it what the specific fault code was. It just gave me eight ideas of the nearest code. So again, even as a service technician myself for a long time I was that being able to be at the outdoor unit and say, you don't know what's going wrong with the unit. It's an open book test, guys. We don't need to know the answer, we just need to know how to access it. And I'm telling you that if you haven't used ChatGPT, it is a, it has so many more applications, I'm still discovering them myself. But it's a great starting point. It's like, it's, it's like going to the old guy in the field and asking him, what, what, what do I do? Except it's on your phone or your computer and you're able to ask, ask the Internet what to do and it's going to give you an answer back, which is great.

Yeah, well, amazing. And you know, as we wrap up, you know, Rob, I think you said it so perfectly there. So, you know, saying if everyone else is moving forward, you can't be the one standing still. And I think you had just great advice on saying just go and ask it questions, you know, and you know, like, like Lauren's saying here in the comments, like, you just have to know how to prompt it. You just have to be able to, to talk to it. So. So Rob, thank you again for joining the show. Very much appreciate your insight. So thank you for joining us. And speaking of, Rob mentioned ChatGPT, go in and use it. We're going to have more info in our newsletter about this and to give you some practical tips on how to do this regardless of your industry. But go to your everydayai.com Sign up for our newsletter and we are actually giving away the premium version to ChatGPT. So sign up and we'll give you more information on that. So thank you for tuning into the live show or listening on the podcast, reading the newsletter. Rob, thank you for joining us.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

All right, so we hope to see you back Monday and every day with Everyday AI. Thank you.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit your everyday AI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.