When Google acquired British Artificial Intelligence (AI) company DeepMind for over $500 million in 2014, it was part of a wave of increasing hype about the potential of machine learning to transform societies and economies worldwide. Two years later and commercial opportunities for DeepMind and AI tech are beginning to be explored more.
Beating humans at notoriously complex board games and within hospitals on healthcare projects has ensured that DeepMind remains in the headlines, but in terms of commercial value, the technology’s full potential is still relatively unexplored.
However, Google has announced that it has now unlocked one of those initial possibilities applying an AI system to control energy use in parts of its data centres. Power consumption is typically extremely high in data centres, where large electrical servers are prevented from overheating by a network of cooling units. During a testing phase in the first part of 2016, Google reportedly achieved a 40% reduction in energy use at its data centres through employing DeepMind to optimise consumption.
The reduction was achieved by training the self-learning algorithms to predict heat patterns within data centres, meaning that the buildings didn’t need to provide any more cooling than necessary.
Extrapolated out globally and the impact of applying this technology could be significant for Google. Its data centres are found worldwide, each containing over 10,o00 servers, which power services like Search, Gmail and Youtube.
It is still very early days for the commercial applications of machine learning, and reducing energy use is unlikely to be the most ambitious or inspiring example. However, Google’s recent announcement seems to confirm the general perception that machine learning is a technology that could have a significant impact across a range of different business, societal and economic activities.
Source: Google harnesses the power of AI to cut energy use
Got a story, new technology or idea that you think Circulate should be exploring? Let us know by e-mail or contacting us through our About page.
The post Why Google is using machine learning to optimise its data centres appeared first on Circulate.
Source: Circulate News RSS