Latest news with #Whittemore
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Maine is training an army of HVAC pros to meet its heat pump goals
Powering Rural Futures: Clean energy is creating new jobs in rural America, generating opportunities for people who install solar panels, build wind turbines, weatherize homes, and more. This five-part series from the Rural News Network explores how industry, state governments, and education systems are training this growing sputtered drone of a vacuum pump filled the former milking barn that now houses Kennebec Valley Community College's heat pump lab. Instructor Dave Whittemore, who held the yellow vacuum in one hand and displayed an app tracking atmospheric pressure on his phone in the other, explained in a raised voice how to do an 'evacuation,' ridding the heat pump of air and moisture to avoid malfunctions down the road. 'The longevity of the equipment is important,' said Whittemore, who teaches students how to install the increasingly popular electric heating and cooling units. 'If it's not done right, then it's going to fail prematurely. And that's the biggest reason that I personally try to keep up with industry best standards and I pass that on to my students.' Six years ago, Gov. Janet Mills traveled to the college to sign a bill aimed at transforming Maine's market for heat pumps, an environmentally friendly alternative to oil furnaces and gas boilers, and set a goal of installing 100,000 units by 2025. The state, now a national leader for heat pump adoption, met that goal two years ahead of schedule, and Mills once again traveled to the rural Somerset County campus to announce a new target: another 175,000 heat pumps by 2027. Maine needs skilled workers to reach this goal, demanding training initiatives from all corners of the state to build HVAC, refrigerant, and electrical knowledge in the clean energy workforce. Without a strong pipeline, the state risks delays in reaching its heat pump target, putting its climate goals at risk. So far, rural counties have seen some of the fastest rates of clean energy worker growth, according to state data. In Somerset County, where KVCC is located, the number of clean energy workers has grown by 44% since 2020. As part of this push, the community college launched a high-tech heat pump training lab in 2021 and has trained over 300 students. The initiative is one of many clean energy programs the school offers as part of a broader, state-supported effort to meet Maine's goal of reaching 30,000 clean energy jobs by 2030. Efficiency Maine, a quasi-governmental agency that oversees the state's energy efficiency programs, has invested more than $400,000 in installation and weatherization training programs at KVCC and supports 29 similar programs at other institutions each year. Another key piece of state support comes through the Governor's Energy Office's Clean Energy Partnership, which has awarded nearly $5 million in grants for clean energy training and apprenticeship programs across the state since 2022 and has seen over 3,500 participants. Businesses have also developed their own on-the-job training programs to help meet demand. But the state still faces a daunting challenge: It must employ more than 14,000 new workers to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs by the end of the decade. Between 2019 and 2023, the number of workers in the field grew by less than a thousand. While the state says it remains dedicated to this goal, some in the industry worry federal funding cuts and tariffs could create challenges for the workforce development pipeline. Heat pumps have emerged as a pillar of Maine's clean energy strategy: The units can reduce carbon dioxide emissions between 38% and 53% compared to a gas furnace, according to a 2022 study in the academic journal Energy Policy, and have been touted as a way to reduce energy costs. Rural areas have historically spent more on energy bills and participated less in residential energy and efficiency financing and rebate programs to lower costs, according to a state report from 2023. To help rural Mainers overcome geographic barriers in accessing cost-lowering energy initiatives, the state must bolster its rural workforce, according to a 2018 study the Island Institute produced in partnership with the Governor's Energy Office. The demand for cleaner energy has grown not only in response to the state's climate goals, but also as Maine's electricity costs rise. A Maine Monitor analysis showed that electricity costs increased at the third-highest rate in the U.S. between 2014 and 2024. A Maine Monitor analysis of 2023 U.S. Department of Energy and Bureau of Labor Statistics data prepared for E2 shows that two-thirds of the state's clean energy jobs were in the energy-efficiency sector, while about a fifth of jobs were in renewables. Workforce development has become a priority for the state as the clean energy industry grows, said Tagwongo Obomsawin, the program manager for the state's Clean Energy Partnership, noting that it can provide good paying jobs for Mainers and reduce energy costs. 'Employers are definitely a really important part of the picture, but we don't want to leave out anyone,' Obomsawin said. 'We recognize that training providers, academia, state government, organized labor, and industry all have a role to play in making sure that we have a robust system that supports people in finding job opportunities, getting access to training, and localizing the benefits of the energy transition.' Heat pump training is just one of several clean energy programs offered through the Maine Community College System, which includes KVCC. The system works with industry and state leaders to grow the workforce. The network of schools also trains students in electric vehicle maintenance, fiber optics, aquaculture, and more. Dan Belyea, the system's chief workforce development officer, said short-term training and scholarship funding are centered on needs that arise in the industry, which the schools gauge by looking at labor market data and talking to employers. Programs that are highest in demand tend to include electrical and heat pump training, Belyea said. In 2022, KVCC hoped to use a nearly $250,000 grant from the Clean Energy Partnership to offer programs on electric vehicles and NABCEP solar photovoltaic installation. But trouble finding instructors and low interest among students made it difficult to launch. Instead, KVCC doubled down on energy efficiency. It launched a building science program with the funding last fall, which had five students, two of whom were able to complete the certification. Other clean energy workforce initiatives have popped up across the state. Some employers run their own heat pump or solar installation training labs, and several adult education programs and nonprofits also offer classes designed to help people move into the industry. PassivHaus, a Freeport-based organization, received $180,000 in Clean Energy Partnership money in 2022 to host training programs on the state's energy code. The company ran 29 trainings across the state, from Portland to Presque Isle. Naomi Beal, executive director of PassivHaus, noted that getting enough students to attend the training was easier in areas like Portland but trickier in more rural areas. 'I always feel like it's very important to consider when going into Greenfield or Machiasport or wherever that there are just not that many people. … So if we get five people showing up, that's probably statistically way more interest than [a larger number of attendees] down in Portland,' Beal said. 'We just try to be patient and persistent with the smaller towns and the smaller attendance.' In Freeport, Scott Libby, the owner of Royal River Heat Pumps, walked through his training center as he explained that all his workers go through heat pump training that starts with the basics, regardless of experience, to ensure each worker is equipped to handle the job. 'A lot of these heat pumps have 12-year warranties,' Libby said. 'That's 4,380 days. The most important day is Day 1. It needs to be installed properly.' Libby, who has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy on workforce development and sits on a new energy-efficiency workforce subcommittee being developed by the Governor's Energy Office, said he's aware of a number of different workforce development initiatives but that it's difficult to comprehend how they all work together. He said some forms of programming aren't sufficient for what's actually needed in the field: Students who sit through a six-week or six-month program that teaches the basics of how heat pumps work may come out with little to no hands-on experience with a power tool or climbing a ladder. Libby emphasized the need for more collaboration between different workforce development efforts and a more systematic approach, with quality checks in place. He suggested putting more thought into designing industrial arts and home economics programs in middle and high schools to introduce students to different career pathways early on. He also said more stringent licensing requirements could help with the quality of workers moving into the field. As it stands, there is no specific licensing required to install heat pumps in Maine, though workers need an Environmental Protection Agency Section 608 license to deal with the refrigerant used inside the unit, and an electrical license to complete the wiring. He acknowledged that new regulation could 'cripple' workforce development efforts but said the move is imperative to control the level of training workers receive and make sure everyone is qualified to install heat pumps. There are hundreds of contractors listed as qualified heat pump installers on Efficiency Maine's website, a list he said in his opinion should be much shorter. At KVCC's heat pump lab, Whittemore gestured at eight heat pumps mounted on prop walls used for training, listing the types of new units he hopes to get soon — ideally through donations from companies who have given units in the past. Regulatory changes to refrigerants that went into effect this year mean the school needs to replace the heat pumps it uses to train students. 'Most of the procedures with the new refrigerants are the same. It's just that we can't put this new refrigerant in these existing heat pumps,' he said. 'So I've got to get eight new heat pumps.' The broader challenge he sees for the industry is tariffs, which he fears could lead to higher equipment prices and lower demand. This, in turn, could mean a lower need for workers. 'I think that's going to slow this down,' he said. Maine has two years to reach its goal of installing 275,000 heat pumps and five years to reach its goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs. But uncertainties in building Maine's workforce lie ahead. The Clean Energy Partnership Project, which has funded many of the state's clean energy workforce development programs, typically announces new grants in the summer, but the Governor's Energy Office stopped short of committing to another round of funding this year. 'We can't predict the future, but the existing programs that we have will continue on for at least another couple of years,' Obomsawin said. She said a partnership the Energy Office has with the Department of Labor to provide career navigation services will continue into 2026, as will workforce development programs that received funding and are already operational. But she cautioned that it is still too early to know what impact policy changes at the federal level will have on the clean energy sector. Efficiency Maine said that the state is still on track to achieve its heat pump goals — at least for now. Executive Director Michael Stoddard said that the heat pump rebate program has funding from the Electric Utility Conservation Program and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for at least the next three years. However, some smaller initiatives, such as a revolving loan to help Mainers buy new heat pump systems, face uncertainty as the federal grants funding the project are in flux. Libby, of Royal River Heat Pumps, has 40 years of HVAC industry experience and said funding uncertainty will make it a challenge to reach the state's heat pump goal. 'I think it's definitely going to be harder,' Libby said. 'I mean, I'm not ready to give up on it yet. I don't think anybody is ready to give up on it.' This reporting is part of a collaboration between the Institute for Nonprofit News' Rural News Network and Canary Media, South Dakota News Watch, Cardinal News, The Mendocino Voice, and The Maine Monitor. Support from Ascendium Education Group made the project possible.
Forbes
22-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Companies Race Toward AI Agent Adoption
Internet technology and people's networks use AI to help with work, AI Learning or artificial ... More intelligence in business and modern technology, AI technology in everyday life. People have been talking about it for a while, but now the industry is seeing part of that new rush to utilize what can be a game-changer for companies. Of course, the rise of the AI agent is no small thing. Many people who had a front-row seat to the cloud and all of the disruption that it brought understand that it was a pebble in the ocean compared to what's coming. The prospect of simulating human decision-making, and handing knowledge work to large language models, is a big deal. It leads to replacing human workers with something much less costly and more durable – workers who never need lunch, or a bathroom break. Yes, AI engines are far more efficient than humans in so many ways, and now we're seeing that bear out in the enterprise markets. Reading through some reports on the utility of enterprise AI agents, I noticed that many of them refer to customer support, as well as marketing and process support or fulfillment, as popular implementations. A few other top use cases involve knowledge assistance, generative AI in existing workflows, and the daily usage of productivity tools by front-line workers. That last one speaks to the often-promoted idea of the 'human in the loop' or HITL, and the desire that AI not replace humans, but augment their work instead. Practically, though, some of these AI agents leave us wondering: what is the HITL actually needed for? Consultants and reporting companies are chiming in with rosy projections for the year ahead. estimates $3.6 billion for the enterprise AI agent market in 2023 and $139 billion by 2033. Deloitte adds the following projection: 25% of companies expected to embrace AI agents by 2025, and 50% two years later. However, given that nearly all companies everywhere will want some of this functionality, the numbers, in both cases, are likely to be much higher. And here's this from a McKinsey report: 'McKinsey research sizes the long-term AI opportunity at $4.4 trillion in added productivity growth potential from corporate use cases.' In a recent episode of the AI Daily Brief podcast, (one of my favorites), host Nathaniel Whittemore talks about a move in executive estimates of investment: from $9 million last quarter to $114, million in Q1 of 2025. 'I think that those of us, probably most of you, who are listening, who have used these tools, find them very quickly making their way into your daily habits,' Whittemore adds. 'I would expect to see (the numbers do) nothing but increase in the coming quarters.' He also talks about a KPMG study of companies launching enterprise pilots after experimentation with the technology, suggesting that doubled from 37% in Q4 to 65% in Q1, and that 99% of companies said they intend to deploy these agents at some point '99% of organizations surveyed said that they plan to deploy agents, suggesting to me that 1% of organizations misread the question,' he adds. Whether or not 1% deliberately forswear the technology is probably beside the point – we have to anticipate that demand is going to be very high. Although models like OpenAI's o3 are evolving quickly, and no-code tools are democratizing the process of creating applications, there are still some clear boundaries to what AI can do in the workplace. A main one consists of accuracy challenges. The most common word applied to this for LLMs is 'hallucinations.' Experts are finding, in general, that models with more inference are producing more hallucinations, and that's a problem as these uses become more important to the companies that have already jumped on the bandwagon. Case in point: a news story showing a customer support engine named Sam at Cursor, who apparently created a new policy erroneously, and started shutting down people's access to the platform. The shakeout showed why these kinds of mistakes make a difference. Another concern is hacking, where bad actors could take advantage of the functionality to compromise systems. A third is regulation – what is the landscape around these agents going to be like? All of these should be considered as top brass mull opportunities. I also came across this handy chart and process description from Gartner, of which the firm's magic quadrant report has been so helpful in the IT world. Garner representatives suggest mapping the enterprise pain points, and then addressing them with the AI agents. Address them, to do what? 'Enhance customer experiences,' the authors write. 'Streamline operations, and uncover new products, services, or revenue streams.' Another approach that might deal with hallucinations is ensemble learning. Having one model check the work of another can prevent those hallucinations and mistakes from percolating into the places where AI agents help with production. Some are suggesting even access to web search can help mitigate a model's hallucinations, which is another thing brought up on that AI Daily Brief episode. In so many of the events that I've been privileged to attend, and even host over the last year or so, I have heard the same refrains: that we have to get ready to welcome in AI agents into the fold. What all of this tells us is that the idea of company AI agent adoption is not just a flash in the pan. It's happening all around us, and we should be paying attention.
Forbes
09-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
OpenAI To Go – Open Source? And News On Project Stargate, Etc.
The Open AI logo, which represents the American-based artificial intelligence (AI) research ... More organization known for releasing the generative chatbot language model AI ChatGPT and initiating the AI spring, is being displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Some of the pressures in today's AI industry have to do with whether companies decide to limit access to their designs, or release them to wider audiences. The open source debate has been part of model development since the beginning – and recent news shows that companies at the forefront of the AI model charge are often able to put pressure on each other. As I often do, I got some early remarks on this from the AI Daily Brief podcast where host Nathaniel Whittemore covered the issue about a week ago. The announcement from Sam Altman last week focused on OpenAI's plan to release its first open source model since GPT2, in the context of new funding of $40 billion on a $300 billion evaluation. The key here is that Whittemore and others all suggest that part of the reason OpenAI decided to do this was because of DeepSeek, since the announcement from Sam Altman came a week after the Chinese company's unveiling of its own open source model. With groundbreaking uses of reinforcement learning and an openly available design, DeepSeek's R1 made a lot of news. Now, OpenAI's open source announcement is making its own waves. 'It seemed like somewhere along the way, OpenAI had become concerned from a safety standpoint or for some other reason,' Whittemore said, trying to explain the sudden shift. 'However, it's clear that there's been an evolution on this more recently.' Higher-ups at OpenAI, Whittemore adds, talk about this open source model and how users can run it on their own hardware. Altman, for his part, has said he's excited to see what developers build. As Whittemore notes, DeepSeek didn't just open source its model recently – the firm also open sourced training optimizations. In another part of the podcast, Whittemore cites comments from Chinese officials describing a 'nationwide technology transfer,' and suggesting that China tends to help other countries when innovating like this. Calling China 'the country of the great firewall,' one critic quoted by Whittemore opines on how China is 'focused on winning' with a 'new AI Belt and Road system' and 'open source modernization.' In short, Whittemore's analysis points to realities around geopolitical tension in AI: as in this article where writer Sharon Goldman suggests OpenAI's 'rivals are closing in,' not just internationally, but domestically as well. Once again, Whittemore returns to one of his favorite use cases in talking about implementations and applications of AI. Invoking Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation firm that famously partners with Disney, Whittemore sort of blends the idea of branding visuals with model use in general. In the past, Altman has had to come out in defense of what Whittemore calls 'Ghiblification,' where everyone and their uncle uses ChatGPT to make themselves or others resemble a character from one of these anime productions. In any case, mentioning a trend toward global AI competition, Whittemore opens the door to the open source debate showing that Altman and team may be focused on 'more than just money.' In addition to the big new $40 billion in funding, OpenAI is apparently due to get $500 billion from private investors, either to create a supercomputer, build new data centers, or both. The Stargate initiative, headed by Softbank, will deliver this investment money to OpenAI gradually, as construction starts on two facilities in Abilene, Texas. There hasn't been a lot of prominent media coverage of this, but it will undoubtedly play into the funding equation and how work gets done on American AI infrastructure. Anyway, given everything that it has achieved, OpenAI seems positioned to follow through on its pledge to add fuel to the open source movement and the democratization of AI. We'll see how this shakes out.
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Picture This: Big Changes With ChatGPT's Image Release
Artist's palettes, Anchor Studio, Newlyn, Cornwall, 2019. Detail showing two of artist Virginia ... More Bounds' paint palettes on the paint-splattered floorboards of the artist's studio. Artist Steven Baker. (Photo by Historic England Archive/Heritage Images via Getty Images) Some of the biggest news this past week was OpenAI's decision to put new image generation powers right in the hands of its model, which is the first of its kind to really become a household name. Now, ChatGPT can give us a new kind of visual iconography, along with all of the knowledge work it already does. It's interesting to think about how this will change media and a lot of other domains. I'm going to go over some of the major changes mentioned by Nathaniel Whittemore on a recent AI Daily Brief podcast, as he quotes an X post by Balaji Srinivasan. So these are third-hand points, but I'll add my own insight based on what I've heard from conferences and events, and in classes, and all around the MIT community this year. One of the obvious fruits of this innovation is that there will be less of a burden on the human to craft code, or prompt AI to produce robust visuals. Srinivasan mentions the example of Instagram filters, where all you need with the new technology is a simple keyword. Another quote from Srinivasan is that 'the baseline quality of memes should rise.' It's easy to imagine how this works – you take the text, and ChatGPT capably adds the image – and it's perfect. Presumably, we will get better visual memes, although why we need the quality of memes to increase is sort of unclear. Yes, it's a modern form of communication, but you'd think there will be alternatives, such as the following: This one, I thought, was extremely interesting. Essentially, the ChatGPT endowed with this image capacity will be able to go back and pull any piece of classic literature or other text, and add vibrant panel images in the style of a graphic novel or a comic book. Imagine Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment brought to life, or Dickens' Bleak House with its unending accounting of decades-long lawsuits, or even just a restaurant menu from the 1700s. Or imagine all of that arcane religious text brought to visceral life, with new images of words that are frankly, in some cases, fairly inflammatory. A graphic version of Malleus Malificarum, anyone? As Solomon said: 'of the making of books, there will be no end.' But the books will be able to interact with audiences in a new way. Whittemore (again quoting the X post) also mentions children's story books, and this is an important point: new audiences will be introduced to whole new realms of literature and ancient text. Two other things that Srinivasan and Whittemore point out are slides, the fodder for professional presentations, and websites. One is made for a particular audience to view in real time. The other one is a digital storefront that should stand the test of time as users come and go. In either case, this is going to make design and engineering almost mindless and immediate. Instead of searching for images and curating them, humans can let AI do almost all of the work, down to the extent that all they have to do is press a few buttons. Part of the enormous knowledge work that is saved here is the decision-making process. If I have to do 20 slides in a deck, and I have to type everything in by hand and add the images, I'm looking at a few hours of work. If, on the other hand, I can just verbally say to ChatGPT: 'come up with 20 slides for this,' it's all done almost before I can blink. I think here the major takeaway has to do with deepfakes. It will be ridiculously easy to put words in someone's mouth, or even show them saying things that they never said. Agentic AI may lead to people's agents posting things that they never would have posted on their own. This may not be very cohesive for social media, but it's certain to be extremely interesting. Just like with books, movies could get a makeover, but it's different when you're already dealing with visual presentation. I guess what you would have is just AI-driven makeovers of the classics, to where a film like Psycho might be presented in color, or for instance, with more gender-bending, or different music, or a little more dynamism on the part of the main characters…? The possibilities are endless. Nobody has a claim to knowing exactly how these innovations are going to shake out. But the above use cases are pretty good guesses, informed by professionals who understand this landscape pretty well. I'll continue to bring you some of the best news in the digital world as we get used to all of these amazing things that the new models can do.
Forbes
31-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
5 Reasons You Should Still Learn To Code
With AI doing so much of the coding and software development that's happening these days, do humans still need to learn all of these computer programming skills? It's a big question for a lot of people who are making career choices, and for leaders and talent developers, too. I'm going to take a stab at answering this question using resources like a recent edition of the AI Daily Brief podcast that I listen to with Nathaniel Whittemore, where he broke a lot of this down. I've also heard a lot of input from movers and shakers all over the industry about that essential question – should people still learn to code? But before I do that, I'd like to go back to the term 'vibe coding' – the idea that humans Illustrate the broad strokes of a program, and use AI to complete the details. Vibe coding doesn't mean that you're completely removed from the coding process. But it does mean automating a lot of this work. That said, here are some of the reasons I've heard most commonly expressed for people continuing to learn programming languages. Input from Steve Jobs and others promoting the practice of coding resonates in the context of the tasks that career professionals have to do. 'Everybody in the country should learn how to program a computer,' the now-deceased tech mogul said. 'It teaches you how to think.' In a way, that says it all. 'Certainly, there's an argument that in a world where even more of our world is mediated by code, the particular genre of thinking that coding enables is even more valuable,' Whittemore adds. In the podcast, Whittemore also talks about people who know how to do a queue sort or write a hash table may be better at using AI to code than others who don't. Here's another argument for humans coding – the AI doesn't have all of the contextual details about your business. Unless you've connected something through an API, or entered a whole lot of data, the human still knows more about the enterprise activity than the computer does. So there are some aspects that AI won't be as capable at. Basically speaking, although AI can excel at code syntax and logic and reasoning, it reaches a limitation when it comes to creativity. I'll use another example from the podcast, where Whittemore talked about how computers and AI may not be able to come up with new programming languages. He also invoked the new hot slogan from Andre Karpathy that 'English is the hottest new programming language,' but suggested that we can still utilize the syntax from languages like Python and C. Many experts in the field have also pointed out that humans can be essential in helping with debugging and fixing glitches in code. The example that Whittemore uses is working with the tool Lovable to create a codebase. When something goes wrong, he notes, it's important to be able to get in there and fix it. So that's another reason for human involvement in coding processes. Now that I've enumerated those arguments for community coding, let's talk about how this is approached in the industry. Later in the podcast, Whittemore talked about how senior developers may use AI instead of junior developers, and there might not be any junior developer jobs left. So should people stop learning to code if they won't be able to get a job as a junior developer? That, he says, is missing the big picture. 'Learning to code to get a junior developer job seems a little insane right now,' he says. 'On the flip side, I think that there is basically nothing higher leverage than you can be doing right now than learning this new vibe coding paradigm.' Don't learn the traditional way, he urges, learn differently, and combine your coding knowledge with a knowledge of how the modern world works – how to create things, how to move the needle with so much creative power at your fingertips. I'll leave out the part about predictions by notable entrepreneurs, like Dario Amodei's suggestion the AI will be doing 90% of coding soon, or Sundar Pichai saying that Google relies on AI for 25% of its codebase. Whittemore lays out some of the arguments for and against larger percentages of AI responsibility for code, and you can find that in the audio itself. Whittemore ends that particular podcast with a neat reference to an atavistic literary movement, combining it with AI, and not for the first time, either. Not too long ago, I looked up the word 'shoggoth' as it's used in the AI community, and found out it's a Lovecraft term referring to something like an amorphous blob in AI parlance. Whittemore, for his part, talks about how he used AI to generate a game like the classic Oregon Trail that GenXers played on school library computers featuring monochrome stick drawings. He took that model, he said, and applied it to the Lovecraftian world for an interesting look at AI-generated game development. He also apparently worked on new sets of Magic the Gathering resources. All of that shows us how these things work in aid of greater human creativity. 'Don't tell us,' Whittemore says. 'Show us.' So there you have it – several reasons to still be involved in knowing the syntax and use of modern programming languages, even though AI can do a lot of it by itself.
