Ryo Koyama: Hi, I'm Ryo Koyama. Welcome to Remotely Local, where we talk about all things that
Ryo Koyama: are happening in the device world and physical AI. I'm very happy today to
Ryo Koyama: have Sam Cox on who's CTO of Mountain Vector. Welcome Sam.
Sam Cox: Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Ryo Koyama: So, for those who don't know what Mountain Vector does, uh why don't you give us a
Ryo Koyama: little bit overview what the company does and um what's happening in
Ryo Koyama: your particular space of the market.
Sam Cox: Uh so Mountain Vector we do all things energy management from you know basic utility
Sam Cox: bill management type stuff all
Sam Cox: the way down to high level advanced analytics to breaking down you know solar
Sam Cox: battery setups getting specific uh usage and savings numbers usage and
Sam Cox: spend savings numbers against that. So lots of high level analytics in regards to
Sam Cox: energy management a lot of AI different pro uh AI processing different
Sam Cox: types of things for uh just making people's lives easier when it comes to that environment.
Ryo Koyama: Now we we've talked a little bit in the past and one of the
Ryo Koyama: things that I found really interesting is that you know energy has been around for a
Ryo Koyama: long time and you know adoption isn't always as quickly done as people
Ryo Koyama: think and so you know you you talked about dot matrix printers but it sounds like
Ryo Koyama: you know part of the challenge isn't as simple as hey let's grab all
Ryo Koyama: this data let's analyze it you know the way that it's portrayed in the media talked
Ryo Koyama: about the dot matrix type of experience because it goes all the way
Ryo Koyama: down to that.
Sam Cox: Sure. Definitely. So, utilities are a very I mean, utilities have been around since
Sam Cox: electricity's been around and getting them to do or to
Sam Cox: adopt any new technologies is a very difficult feat because there's all these
Sam Cox: integrated processes and things like that that have been, you know, people have been using for years. So, they
Sam Cox: don't want to break things. So, they just kind of keep going with the same setup
Sam Cox: over time. And what you'll find is a lot of smaller local municipalities,
Sam Cox: they'll have these uh utility bill formats that are just, you know, paper documents
Sam Cox: that you have to scan in. Um, but the format is something akin to a
Sam Cox: dot matrix printer, right? Like you just have very poor quality account numbers,
Sam Cox: very poor quality all of the data. It's
Sam Cox: very difficult to read for a human. So trying to get all that stuff together such
Sam Cox: that a computer can do anything with it. It takes a decent amount of effort.
Sam Cox: And thankfully we have, you
Sam Cox: know, AI tools and different things like that to help us these days.
Sam Cox: Uh, but it's just trying to help move an industry that's very much stuck in the past into
Sam Cox: any type of really to the 2010s even is just it's a feat within itself.
Ryo Koyama: You guys are in the entire domestic US or how do you typically work?
Sam Cox: Yeah, so we're in throughout the entire United States right now.
Sam Cox: I think we're coast to coast. So we've got some spots in California all the way out to uh
Sam Cox: Detroit, I think even Massachusetts area. uh we work with lots and lots of different
Sam Cox: school districts, a few different industrial clients and a few
Sam Cox: other utilities that we'll actually kind of work with to do specific uh things that they need.
Ryo Koyama: Well, that was kind of a range because it sounds like you work, you know,
Ryo Koyama: specifically with a lot of public schools all the way to industrial companies. And so I would imagine that
Ryo Koyama: the whole environment looks very very different and it's probably not shocking
Ryo Koyama: anymore, but there must have been some cases where you walked in and you just
Ryo Koyama: thought, "Wow, this is not what we expected to do."
Ryo Koyama: Any any fun stories in that arena?
Sam Cox: Sure. I think um one of them we had an industrial customer that one
Sam Cox: of their primary problems was getting the information out to their facilities
Sam Cox: managers to be able to make energy
Sam Cox: decisions based on locational LMP pricing, locational marginal pricing.
Sam Cox: Um so you're tracking that you know 15-minute, five-minute
Sam Cox: price signal uh live throughout the day and they want to know are we going beyond a
Sam Cox: certain threshold so you know should we curtail operations should we
Sam Cox: keep going how should we plan for this in the future so we're doing a lot of work
Sam Cox: with them to like set up some things so they have more information in
Sam Cox: terms of figuring out what to do next and we're also working on some more predictive
Sam Cox: type things so that they can you know instead of reacting to the
Sam Cox: present maybe start to plan out for the future a little
Ryo Koyama: What I love about what you guys are doing as a company is that the media loves to talk about physical
Ryo Koyama: AI and I think to the point where there's a c certain amount of uh probably
Ryo Koyama: exhaustion about the topic but you know to me it's AI is obviously very
Ryo Koyama: sophisticated everybody reads about it in the paper every day in terms of how
Ryo Koyama: powerful it is in some ways very dangerous but at the same time what you
Ryo Koyama: have to do and physical AI is really about taking the existing world and making it
Ryo Koyama: be able to take advantage of
Ryo Koyama: AI and obviously you know at Remote.It that's one of the things we pride ourselves
Ryo Koyama: on is we kind of think of ourselves as kind of that that infrastructure there that allows that
Ryo Koyama: connectivity to happen so maybe you know dig into you know sort of what are the
Ryo Koyama: problems that you were facing and why you guys enjoy using Remote.It or maybe
Ryo Koyama: what the use cases might look like
Sam Cox: definitely I I think it's a great point you said like setting up the infrastructure
Sam Cox: because everybody and their mom is like we have AI-driven
Sam Cox: insights we have AI driven this AI driven that somebody's got to build the road if
Sam Cox: you're going to drive on it right So setting up that infrastructure, getting that data from point A to point
Sam Cox: B, that's super important for us. That's like our primary pain point is just getting
Sam Cox: the data to the right place. So from a Remote.It perspective, what we're
Sam Cox: doing is we have, you know, hundreds of devices deployed all across the country and
Sam Cox: we're we're a small company based in New Mexico, you know, one state, I think
Sam Cox: 10 or 12 people. we don't have the resources to be deploying people all over the
Sam Cox: country to go on-site if there's issues with our devices or
Sam Cox: issues that we have to work with somebody to figure out.
Sam Cox: So what we're doing with Remote.It is we're setting up all of our devices so that
Sam Cox: they can be remotely accessed you know anywhere in
Sam Cox: the country uh so that we can get on change configurations for things upload data
Sam Cox: figure out you know what's going on if we're having problems and we're
Sam Cox: taking all of that and then it's feeding right into our backend so we can do
Sam Cox: different analytics uh live real-time spend calculations against um utility
Sam Cox: rates things like that so it really just supports our ability to have that uh that
Sam Cox: live metering infrastructure.
Ryo Koyama: Yeah, I mean that's the one thing I mean it's
Ryo Koyama: interesting because you know as a networking guy I always think about connection but
Ryo Koyama: so much of it is now just about communication like you talked about it's like you know at any point in
Ryo Koyama: time you know that's sort of what inspired the name of the podcast you know remotely
Ryo Koyama: local and so you know you want to be in New Mexico and like you
Ryo Koyama: know and I think your case Montana and you want to be able to see your whole
Ryo Koyama: environment as if it's there and it sounds like that's a that's kind of it's
Ryo Koyama: not only important it's kind of become fundamental because if you can't see the
Ryo Koyama: world today you sort of have a problem and it sounds like that's part of what
Ryo Koyama: you're able to take advantage using as a service.
Sam Cox: Definitely. I mean if we didn't have Remote.It available I was going to have to
Sam Cox: build it myself and this was this is four years ago that I was looking at
Sam Cox: having to do this and I was you know thinking about reverse SSH tunnels and setting
Sam Cox: up all this infrastructure and I was like this is going to be a lot of work for
Sam Cox: something that we're not going to have to rely on every single day.
Sam Cox: But I found Remote.It and I was like, this is exactly what I need.
Sam Cox: It the price is, you know, I'm I'm saving money
Sam Cox: by not doing this on my own. The customer support has been phenomenal.
Sam Cox: Anytime I've had an issue, even if it wasn't with the product, I was having some uh
Sam Cox: internal issues on the device that I was having trouble diagnosing.
Sam Cox: And I was, you know, emailing back and forth with with rep and they tracked it down
Sam Cox: to an MTU level problem and got it fixed on my end and all of a sudden
Sam Cox: we're back up and running. So Remote.It I've had nothing but spectacular experiences with Remote.It.
Ryo Koyama: Well, that's awesome. We we obviously love to hear that and we're not trying to make
Ryo Koyama: a commercial here, but uh it never hurts when use.
Ryo Koyama: Well, that that's awesome. Like I said, I I think the big challenge is that we're
Ryo Koyama: starting to see and again what I appreciate for what you're saying is that, you
Ryo Koyama: know, most of the internet was
Ryo Koyama: invented when it was a much simpler problem, you know, and eventually got to
Ryo Koyama: everybody just needs to get to a website. But now that you're facing not
Ryo Koyama: only you know internet of things or industrial internet of things along with AI all
Ryo Koyama: of a sudden now you need a real-time communications with everything
Ryo Koyama: you have cellular networks you have people with Wi-Fi you have all kinds of
Ryo Koyama: different network configurations and one of the things we pride ourselves on is
Ryo Koyama: kind of making all that invisible so people don't have to deal with that and it
Ryo Koyama: sounds like maybe that's the key benefit for you is to not have to think
Ryo Koyama: about that. So taking it further then I mean talk a little bit about how you see
Ryo Koyama: physical AI developing now because you know the way I look at it now is going
Ryo Koyama: back to what I said no one who is in the smartphone generation they they fully
Ryo Koyama: expect that they can get to anything anywhere you know they don't understand
Ryo Koyama: the complexities of it because that's sort of the expectation today and so as the
Ryo Koyama: world of energy and energy management starts to develop what what
Ryo Koyama: do you think is going to be in a crazy amount of time like 3 years from today what
Ryo Koyama: is going to be the expectation that isn't the expectation today.
Sam Cox: I think I guess a more declarative world meaning that we know what we want in our heads.
Sam Cox: You know, for example, like at a CEO level, I know what product I want, but I don't
Sam Cox: know how to get to that implementation level. But if I can just
Sam Cox: say to an AI, I want this and it can do it, then all of a sudden the world opens up
Sam Cox: in ter in terms of possibilities. So
Sam Cox: like you can go from having kind of loosely structured data or like very like in the
Sam Cox: case of utility bills for example varying different types of data
Sam Cox: with like loose relationships. I can turn an AI at it and say go retrieve this
Sam Cox: information, go do this, go do that, you know, put it all in this
Sam Cox: report, put it in this database, and it can just figure it out and do it.
Sam Cox: And so it's it's kind of just it's going to augment our reality, I think, in terms
Sam Cox: of human capability. It's just another tool really that we're all kind of learning
Sam Cox: how to use and things are getting better and better as we go.
Sam Cox: But yeah, I think if I just had to look
Sam Cox: three years out, it's just going from that more imperative setup to that more
Sam Cox: declarative. Just say what you want, you know, get what you need.
Ryo Koyama: Well, I love that. Like I said, I think we're gonna
Ryo Koyama: we're gonna definitely title this podcast declarative, not imperative because uh I
Ryo Koyama: love that expression, but I think to your point, the big challenge
Ryo Koyama: of shifting to AI is that everything isn't just plain language.
Ryo Koyama: And it becomes very very declarative because you're not thinking about how do I make
Ryo Koyama: this happen. You're thinking about the what do I want to have happen?
Ryo Koyama: And it can be very very frustrating if it's not possible because again the expectation
Ryo Koyama: in the the world of smartphones and next with AI is going to be why can't it happen
Ryo Koyama: and obviously ChatGPT and all
Ryo Koyama: the other LLM are very good about saying well of course you're right Sam I should be
Ryo Koyama: able to do that for you and so that's the world that we're heading into. All
Ryo Koyama: right as we wrap up then what's your hot take? So what's the thing that you think
Ryo Koyama: that's going to happen in the world of physical AI that's maybe not
Ryo Koyama: conventional wisdom that is maybe a little bit orthogonal to what everybody else is thinking?
Sam Cox: I think especially around the beginning of uh generative AI becoming more and more
Sam Cox: popular. There was this general
Sam Cox: kind of I guess concern or thought that like AI is going to take your job.
Sam Cox: AI is going to you know do this AI is going to take over all this stuff and then people
Sam Cox: are going to kind of be left on the sidewalk with nothing to do.
Sam Cox: And in my experience, having AI available to me, it's sped me up in a lot of ways,
Sam Cox: but I am more busy than ever because now instead of doing one
Sam Cox: feature a month or one feature a week, I can do six.
Sam Cox: I can do 10. And so it becomes like I was always going to have
Sam Cox: to solve those six or 10 other problems, but now it just the queue empties and fills
Sam Cox: up more quickly. So, I think AI is
Sam Cox: really going to go from I'm going to take your job to you're going to have to have
Sam Cox: me to use your like to do your job. For example, like a computer or Excel.
Sam Cox: Like there's certain accounting things that you would never want to do by hand, but
Sam Cox: that's how they used to do it. Then you get Excel and now you can do 50
Sam Cox: different accounting things, but you've now you just got 100 more customers.
Sam Cox: So, it's all just a matter of volume. And I think uh we're just going to see more
Sam Cox: and more volume pour into people's work queues, I guess, as a result of AI, rather
Sam Cox: than seeing people's jobs be taken away.
Ryo Koyama: No, I I I think that's a very good take.
Ryo Koyama: I mean, one of my views is I always say every industrial revolution was marked by
Ryo Koyama: indentured servitude. And if you look at the economics of AI, in a lot of
Ryo Koyama: ways, this is the cheapest indentured servitude we've ever had.
Ryo Koyama: And I think you explained it well. It's like, well, I would have had I could have
Ryo Koyama: thought about these six things in serial, but
Ryo Koyama: now I do them all in parallel. And and I love your Excel analogy because I think
Ryo Koyama: that's the big thing. It's like, I could do this, but it'd be terrible, and now
Ryo Koyama: it's like, oh, I want to get this done, and it's a great thing to be able to do.
Ryo Koyama: So, we talked a little bit about how AI is a little bit too positive.
Ryo Koyama: Do do you see that as a problematic thing where
Ryo Koyama: they it is so reinforcing? I mean I I joke that it's sort of the creation of
Ryo Koyama: religion because it is the source of truth for so many people. What what do
Ryo Koyama: you think especially like in the energy sector what's the risk of AI being so
Ryo Koyama: declarative about your right and how do
Ryo Koyama: you think that will affect your industry as it goes?
Sam Cox: It's an interesting question. I think the risk you kind of run into there is like a
Sam Cox: very simple one I can think of is like you ask somebody to generate a
Sam Cox: report that would historically require you to go and you know gather all this
Sam Cox: information kind of do all this manual analysis things like that when now you
Sam Cox: can tell the AI to go do it maybe it has to go to the internet fetch things maybe it
Sam Cox: has to read some things from documents and maybe you've described exactly what you want maybe that's what
Sam Cox: the AI produced but what you said and what you needed are not the same thing.
Sam Cox: And that's kind of what I'm sometimes finding when I'm working with AI is that I'll
Sam Cox: say that I want one thing and then it'll go to do it and I'm like, "This doesn't work in a production
Sam Cox: environment. Why would you even attempt to do this?"
Sam Cox: And so I think it's it's something that's got to be closely monitored.
Sam Cox: Not sure how well that answers your question, but I guess that's kind of how I'm thinking.
Ryo Koyama: No, I I think that's right because, you know, again, to reinforce your point about
Ryo Koyama: it's going to take jobs in a lot of ways, it makes human competence more
Ryo Koyama: important because you're going to have to evolve what those things are.
Ryo Koyama: So, well Sam, it's been great to have you and anybody who's looking for physical
Ryo Koyama: AI in the energy space, Mountain Vector is the place to go and u they're definitely
Ryo Koyama: leading from our perspective a lot of the activities that are out
Ryo Koyama: there. So, it was great having you on and I'm sure we'll have you on again as we
Ryo Koyama: introduce some of our own AI tools because I definitely would look forward to
Ryo Koyama: getting kind of your feedback on that.
Sam Cox: Amazing. Sounds great. Thank you so much for having me.
Ryo Koyama: Thanks, Sam.