Software company Bluon is betting that artificial intelligence, or AI, can help solve the labor shortage — and pass along decades of knowledge from retiring HVAC techs to the next generation. Their new app, MasterMechanic, is a generative AI tool designed specifically for HVAC. Think ChatGPT, except instead of being trained on the internet at large, it was trained on 50,000 HVAC tech support calls. It’s designed to give HVAC technicians step-by-step answers to specific, complex problems in language that is easy to follow and specific to the issue at hand. According to its creators, it answers with 96% accuracy. Is this AI’s future? Domain-specific training, or feeding specific information to the AI so that it becomes highly skilled in spitting out answers based on that set of content? Adam Curry, senior vice president at Bluon thinks so. Not only does the app provide information the way Millennials and Gen Z look for it, but it can provide real-time support for newer techs who would otherwise be calling their service manager.

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