What a broken air conditioner on a 101-degree day taught me about AI

A frantic search for an HVAC repair technician revealed how quietly AI has become part of everyday life.

A quick, light anecdote on this eve of the July 4th holiday weekend 🎆:

As someone who reports on AI all day, every day, I usually feel like I’m on top of what’s going on in the field. I’m terminally online. I know all (ok, most) of the memes. I constantly chat with sources. It’s tough to catch me with news I haven’t heard about.

But yesterday morning? Color me red-hot surprised.

I’ll set the scene: A sizzling, sweltering morning in central New Jersey, about 35 miles southwest of Manhattan. I’m listening to the local meteorologist practically shouting that the temperature will rise to 101 degrees Fahrenheit — the hottest day in 13 years.

Our own air conditioning already seems to be struggling, and a quick look at the outdoor unit offers the bad news: a loud electrical hum and a fan that isn’t moving at all.

My husband immediately speeds off to Home Depot in search of a window unit to help us make it through the day. Meanwhile, I hit the phones to try and find an HVAC repair person available the day before July 4th weekend.

That’s when I realize that nearly every company answers the call with an AI-powered receptionist. This isn’t the typical clunky phone-tree bot or the robotic-sounding mystery voice that does not respond to desperate cries for “representative!”

Instead, these are the most natural, seamless AI voice interactions I've ever experienced. At least twice, I genuinely wonder whether I'm talking to a human. Several even recreate the ambient sounds of a busy office—keyboard clicks, muffled conversations, the kind of background noise you'd expect from a real receptionist.

The giveaways are unceasing friendliness and an occasional awkward pause. But otherwise, the conversation is smooth, answers are quick, and I book an appointment easily. I can imagine some customers being put off by this ultra-realistic yet still artificial intelligence, but at a moment where all I wanted was a last-minute appointment, it worked wonders.

The question is, where have I been? Maybe these improvements in customer service AI have been around for years, for all I know. But while I spend my days immersed in the latest AI news from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta, it turns out that some of the technology’s greatest success is happening in small businesses trying to make sure they don’t miss a call.

In an era where AI pundits are arguing over enterprise adoption, job displacement, upskilling, and forward-deployed engineers, the trades—HVAC, plumbing, roofing, carpentry—may have found one of AI's clearest product-market fits. Missing a phone call can mean losing a customer, and an AI receptionist never takes a lunch break.

It would make for a better ending if my air conditioner had been fixed by one of the companies whose AI receptionist booked the appointment. Alas, no. The hero of the story turned out to be a small local HVAC company with an actual human answering the phone. She booked us for that afternoon, the technician replaced the capacitor, and by dinner the house was blissfully cool again.

But, of course, that’s not the point of this story — though I’m so grateful to every HVAC technician out there working in the blistering heat. The point is that AI is quietly becoming part of ordinary business infrastructure. Not in splashy product launches or viral demos out of Silicon Valley, but in the everyday interactions that keep small businesses running in a small New Jersey town.

I need to keep my eyes open. I'm realizing I’ve spent so much time watching the frontier of AI that I’ve been missing how quickly it has spread into everyday life.

I hope you all enjoy that everyday life this weekend. Happy Fourth.