🎧 #008: Jean-Simon Venne on using AI to transition from reactive to proactive

“How do you make the AI work with humans? So, I don't know if you had the pleasure to sit in an autonomous car… [but] I don't trust it, and it's because I've been conditioned with… a lot of years of driving myself. And for me, you put me behind a wheel… I'm not gonna just cross my arm and look at the show, right?…

So I think anybody who has been maintaining a building for years and years, and it's become your building and you're very proud of what you do, and you should be, it's not an easy job… [But] what about the AI becoming your second in command, managing the ship 24/7, so you could have a better night’s sleep?”

—Jean-Simon Venne

Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart people applying smart building technology—hosted by James Dice. If you’re new to Nexus, you might want to start here.

The Nexus podcast (Apple | Spotify | YouTube | Other apps) is our chance to explore and learn with the brightest in our industry—together. The project is directly funded by listeners like you who have joined the Nexus Pro membership community.

You can join Nexus Pro to get a weekly-ish deep dive, access to the Nexus Vendor Landscape, and invites to exclusive events with a community of smart buildings nerds.

Episode 8 is a conversation with Jean-Simon Venne, CTO and Co-Founder of BrainBox AI, an advanced supervisory control platform for autonomous buildings.

Summary

• We do a deep dive on BrainBox AI, including how they use artificial intelligence to save energy and to adapt building operations to occupancy patterns of the pandemic.
• We talk about the problem with existing control systems and how AI helps supplement them.
• We talk about how AI and humans can be a great team and how the BrainBox team is approaching that teamwork.
• Finally, we talk about how autonomous buildings can lead to an autonomous and cleaner electric grid.
• And much more.

Mentions and Links

1. BrainBox AI (2:27)
2. LTSM (16:59)
3. BACnet, LonWorks, Modbus (27:20)
4. Honeywell (27:24)
5. Haystack (27:48)
6. Autobot project, collaboration with NREL (28:28)
7. Raspberry Pi (40:00)
8. Yoshua Bengio, Jacques Lacan (43:12)
9. Tridium JACE (55:34)

You can find Jean-Simon on LinkedIn and at brainboxai.com.

Enjoy!

Music credit: The Garden State by Audiobinger

Disclaimer: James is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). All opinions expressed via Nexus emails, podcasts, or on the website belong solely to James. No resources from NREL are used to support Nexus. NREL does not endorse or support any aspect of Nexus.

THE ABOVE AUDIO, VIDEO, SUMMARY, AND LINKS WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. PODCAST DEEP DIVES WITH MY REACTIONS, MY TOP HIGHLIGHTS, AND THE FULL TRANSCRIPT ARE EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS OF NEXUS PRO.

Here’s this week’s deep dive outline:

• My reaction
• My highlights
• Reactive vs. Proactive Controls, and how AI enables the latter
• How to use reinforcement learning (a type of AI) to improve upon the current BAS
• A deep dive on BrainBox AI’s entire stack
• The most difficult part of any advanced supervisory control project: pride
• How AI helps increase adaptability and resilience to COVID-19
• How smart buildings can be grouped together to form a smart grid

• Full transcript

Read the deep dive