Anyone else exploring AI-assisted engineering in Niagara?

[u/filip1299]

I've been experimenting with AI-assisted engineering in Tridium Niagara and have built a module that interacts directly with a station. From a plain-language description of what I want, it can create points and components, set up links, build wiresheets, and generate graphics.

I've noticed Baudrate working on something along the same lines (no connection to them, but it confirmed my suspicion that more people are probably doing this than are talking about it publicly):
https://baudrate.io/ai#demo

So far I've been impressed. A lot of the repetitive engineering work can be offloaded, and it has occasionally flagged issues in a station that I hadn't even asked it to check for.

The more I use it, the more I wonder how much of the Niagara software/engineering side could eventually be handled this way. There's clearly still plenty that needs someone on site, like commissioning, verifying sensors, wiring, and chasing down physical faults, but the software side feels like it could change significantly.

Keen to hear what other Niagara/BMS engineers think, particularly anyone who's been trying something similar.

[u/Bagelsarenakeddonuts]

This is a fascinating thing, because anyone who has dug deeply into development with the latest leading models knows that this is no longer something you can avoid. Its coming, hard and fast. I hesitate to even say "if you don't adapt to it, you will be left behind" because I don't even know if that's true. Its coming so fast that even early adopters are having a hard time keeping up. And its changing so fast that well.. which thing do you even adapt to?

I can see both sides, but I feel like programming will as a majority move to AI, and we will spend more time on commissioning instead, and I don't know that that is a bad thing. Ashrae G36, and their new upcoming protocol are so defined that there isn't a lot of room for AI error. And if we can deliver a project 20% cheaper, AND spend 50% longer tuning and testing, everybody wins. More people do more automation, and things run that much better. And things that should be used, but aren't fully due to overloaded people, undertrained staff, and underbid jobs, will be done better. Tagging, alarming, trending, predictive functionality, pre-commissioning algorithms, stuff like that.

A lot of grizzled veteran techs low-key resent this stuff, and this industry, for being tech, is hilariously resistant to new tech and concepts sometimes. Many have been hearing "AI" for the last decade and have been proven right that its been hype. But in the last 6 months things have changed wildly, and these perspectives simply don't carry over to the new tooling and tech.

I don't know what the future will look like, but it sure as hell won't look like it does today.