Costas J. Spanos

Electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Costas Spanos is profiled in an article about his mission to use artificial intelligence to cut office energy use by half, as one way of addressing climate change. The story talks about how Singapore turned to him to help the heavily built tropical nation reduce its air conditioning use to ease climate risks. The author writes: "Recently, the Singaporean government offered Spanos a floor in an office building to renovate. After he finished in January, workers returned to an unassuming new interior evoking the aesthetics of a hip budget airline. The room had been packed with tiny sensors detecting humidity, light, temperature, and CO2 concentration; Spanos had also devised a way to use Wi-Fi to triangulate people's locations by detecting their phones as they move through space. The theory: Armed with that anonymized data, the system would learn the workers' movements, schedules, and preferences and tweak their environment to suit. ... If the workers got too hot or too cold, they could tap an app to say so. The AI would adapt, creating microclimates to reflect their feedback. But in time, Spanos expected, the workers wouldn't bother. His goal is to make the system forgettable."