Skip to footer

Google goes greener: How AI helps Google conserve energy

Google used artificial intelligence to monitor energy use at its data centers, resulting in a 40 percent energy savings.

|
David Golman/AP/File
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal announces a $300 million expansion of Google's data center operations in Lithia Springs, Ga., June 2, 2015.

Korean grandmaster Lee Sedo suffered defeat in Go – a 2,500 year old game exponentially more complicated than chess – at the hands of Google’s Artificial Intelligence program in March.

That same technology is now conserving power at a handful of Google data centers, slashing the energy bills for cooling by 40 percent this spring.

The achievement opens the horizon for energy efficiency gains in manufacturing plants, power plants, and energy grids, all thanks to an artificially intelligent system that can master any pattern, whether on a game board or in a heating and cooling system.

DeepMind uses "deep learning," recognizing patterns in large data sets, to analyze information from thousands of sensors measuring temperature and power usage in each data center. Google’s data centers support Google Search, Gmail, and Youtube, generating high levels of heat that must be removed in order to keep the servers running.

The 40 percent drop in cooling costs corresponds to a 15 percent improvement in power usage efficiency, Google said in a statement.

"We're really thrilled about the environmental impact," Mustafa Suleyman, who leads applied AI at Google DeepMind, told CNN Money.

The AI has also spotted gaps in its coverage and will instruct Google on where to install more sensors to further increase its effectiveness.

All of Google’s data centers will employ the system by the end of the year. The energy savings potential in data centers alone is huge, since according to some estimates, they account for 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

And artificial intelligence can bring about even more energy-saving in other areas as well.

DeepMind will release the details of the system in a white paper within the next six weeks, so that manufacturing facilities and even national energy grids can also take advantage of the energy-saving system, the BBC reported.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Google goes greener: How AI helps Google conserve energy
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0721/Google-goes-greener-How-AI-helps-Google-conserve-energy
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe