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Episode 7 “Something’s going on with the air conditioning,” the Boss snaps, stalking into Mission Control slick with fever sweat.<\/p>\nEpisode 7 “Something’s going on with the air conditioning,” the Boss snaps, stalking into Mission Control slick with fever sweat.<\/p>\n
“There’s nothing wrong with the air conditioning,” the PFY sighs.<\/p>\n
“There is. There’s something seriously wrong. My office is like a bloody sauna, the break room is like the North Sea in winter, and the only place that’s reasonable is the reception area!”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, that’ll be people changing the settings,” the PFY sighs again.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
If I’ve said it once, I’ll recurse for another 999 times: people are idiots.<\/p>\n
Back in the dark ages, office temperature was controlled by opening \u2013 or closing \u2013 a window in the vague hope that the weather gods would smile upon you. People made a brave fist of it. If it was so cold you had to rug up like a member of Scott’s expedition, you rugged up like a member of Scott’s expedition. If you had to strip down to your underwear because of the heat, you wrote your resignation note out beforehand, citing the pressures of work and a medication allergy.<\/p>\n
But then air conditioning came along…<\/p>\n
“When this building was constructed,” I say to the Boss, “it had one of those public-service air conditioning systems whose primary goal was to ensure the long-term survival of Legionella bacteria. That led to a replacement of the building’s HVAC about 15 years ago, then a controller upgrade \u2013 with ‘networking’ \u2013 about eight years ago. At which point it suddenly became an IT problem.”<\/p>\n
“Yes, but what have you done about it?” the Boss asks.<\/p>\n
“We changed the setpoint to 22\u00b0 \u2013 or 71.6\u00b0 in old money \u2013 and locked out the remote controls.”<\/p>\n
“Why?”<\/p>\n
“Because every office has differing opinions about what a ‘comfortable’ temperature is.”<\/p>\n
“And?” the Boss nods.<\/p>\n
“And (before we locked out the controls) on cold mornings \u2013 when the aircon has been off all night \u2013 someone will come into the office, feel cold, and turn the aircon on. Then they’ll crank the setpoint up to the temperature of the Sun, thinking that the room will heat up quicker. An hour later, someone else will come into an office you could bake scones in, and crank the setpoint down to 0 K. Then someone else will come in and turn the aircon off, which also turns off the modulated fresh air fans, so about half an hour after that, the high CO\u2082 trigger will crank the fresh air fans to 100 percent, resulting in the room ending up the same temperature as outside \u2013 which, in the fullness of time, will have someone turning the aircon back on and setting it to either 0 or 10,000\u00b0.”<\/p>\n
“THEN,” the PFY adds, “we’d get a complaint about how the temperature in the room has been all over the place.”<\/p>\n
“So what do we do?” the Boss asks.<\/p>\n
“We do what we said we should do when you suggested unlocking the controls last week.”<\/p>\n
“What was that?”<\/p>\n
“Lock out all the controllers and set the room to 22. Maybe 23 if it’s a room of people who believe that it’s a basic human right to dress in summer clothes all year round.”<\/p>\n
“And that’s all you can do?” the Boss asks.<\/p>\n
“Oh no. We also redirect any messages to the HVAC helpdesk to the Trash.”<\/p>\n
“Surely… AI could do something?” the Boss suggests.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“What?” the Boss asks.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
I’m speechless, and I can’t tell if the PFY’s going to weep or wet himself over the prospect of AI running aircon.<\/p>\n
“We could… give it a try, I suppose,” I say, suppressing (with great effort) any hint of excitement.<\/p>\n
…10 minutes later the PFY, Boss, and I are brainstorming how it would work…<\/p>\n
“We probably need to work out what we use for control inputs,” I hint casually.<\/p>\n
“Temperature,” the Boss says.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, the current system has that, but it doesn’t work. We need some kind of proxy so that AI can adjust it all for healthy outcomes.”<\/p>\n
“If people are even in the building,” the PFY adds.<\/p>\n
“Yes,” the Boss says. “We could save power by finding out if people are in the offices or not from the security system and CCTV cameras.”<\/p>\n
“So it would interface with the security system,” I say, holding up a finger, “obtain the local temperature,” two fingers, “with a view to maximizing staff health,” middle finger.<\/p>\n
“Yes, that sounds great!” the Boss gasps. “How soon can you do it?”<\/p>\n
“How about…” I say, pretending to consider it, “by the end of the week?”<\/p>\n
“That would be great!” the Boss says happily.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
In retrospect, it wasn’t… great. At least not from the Boss’s point of view.<\/p>\n