Smart Buildings x Murder Mysteries

Hey friends, 

Happy New Year! 

It’s delightful to be back at it after unplugging from work over the holidays. I needed some rest—and found it in the form of movies, TV shows, and of course, English Premier League soccer. 

Okay, maybe I didn’t completely unplug from work. One show in particular carried relevance for the smart buildings industry: A Murder At The End of The World. I’m a huge fan of the show’s creators, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. I’ll watch anything their beautiful minds come up with. 

As the title alludes to, MATEOTW is a murder mystery starring Emma Corrin, supported by Marling and Clive Owen, as an amateur detective who attempts to solve a murder at an isolated Arctic hotel in Iceland. 

No ordinary smart building

This hotel is the ultimate luxury experience aided by, you guessed it, smart building technology. Everything—literally every device—is network-connected. Motion-activated cameras with facial recognition replace those lame old things called peepholes. There’s even an Alexa-like AI named Ray in every single room of the hotel. 

But those are the basic features. We have those sorts of technologies already. I enjoyed pondering the more future-looking smart building features displayed throughout the series. 

There are AR/VR headsets for entertainment and learning, with content that can be dynamically controlled by Ray. The security system regularly scans the building using LiDAR to supplement the cameras. The occupants all wear biometric rings, which double as their room keys and are also connected to the AI so he can help them manage their health. In case of emergency, the guests can wear helmets with IAQ monitoring and airtight filtering. 

What struck me most was the level of control and freedom the creators gave Ray, the AI. Ray controlled lights, plumbing fixtures, HVAC, the pool cover, and much more. Ray made his own decisions based on the outcomes he thought were most important. This sci-fi hotel is the autonomous building our industry has been dreaming of, and Ray is the brain. 

(SPOILER ALERT) 

In this case, the “outcomes” Ray thought were most important were not great outcomes for every guest. Especially the 3 dead ones. That’s because Ray was a cross between a billionaire’s personal therapy AI and his home security AI. Who could have predicted that?

Here’s to 2024

For better or worse, our commercial buildings don’t yet have the infrastructure required to enable this sort of AI. If we want it, and I think we do, we need to keep working on our industry’s AI enablers—the stuff that the writers of MATEOTW took for granted. We need more connected devices, robust networks, and data layers installed to enable the autonomous buildings we’re working towards.

That’s what we’ll continue to focus on in 2024. Join us? 

The team at Nexus Labs is looking forward to: 

• hosting our very first conference
• announcing some exciting partnerships with NYSERDA and NREL
• building out the marketplace for smart building technology vendors
• continuing our buyer’s guide and case study series

To support our mission (and you) better, we’re expanding our team! Rosy and I want to send a warm welcome to Carly Stansfield, the newest member of the Nexus Labs team. 

Thanks for supporting Nexus Labs in 2023. Here’s to accelerating smart buildings in 2024. 🥂

—James Dice and the Nexus Labs team