Google Just Put an AI in Charge of Keeping Its Data Centers Cool (zdnet.com)

Google is putting an artificial intelligence system in charge of its data center cooling after the system proved it could cut energy use. From a report: Now Google and its AI company DeepMind are taking the project further; instead of recommendations being implemented by human staff, the AI system is directly controlling cooling in the data centers that run services including Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. "This first-of-its-kind cloud-based control system is now safely delivering energy savings in multiple Google data centers," Google said. Data centers use vast amount of energy and as the demand for cloud computing rises even small tweaks to areas like cooling can produce significant time and cost savings. Google's decision to use its own DeepMind-created system is also a good plug for its AI business. Every five minutes, the AI pulls a snapshot of the data center cooling system from thousands of sensors. This data is fed into deep neural networks, which predict how different choices will affect future energy consumption.

Comments

I have an AI at home, too

[Sooner Boomer]

It's called a THERMOSTAT

and no, it's not connected to the internet.

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

humans emit heat...

Bzzzt!

I'm sorry Dave,
  you must stay at room temperature,
for the good of the Servers.

Dave ?

Dave ?

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

But that it's a very complicated/complex thermostat.

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[The Original CDR]

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." - Scotty (Star Trek 5)

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

humans emit heat...

Bzzzt!

I'm sorry Dave, you must stay at room temperature, for the good of the Servers.

Dave ?

Dave ?

There are smart thermostats which don't connect to the internet. You set upper and lower bounds ad the thermostat engages heat or AC if the ambient temperature goes outside the set limits. I fail to see what AI adds to this.

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." - Scotty (Star Trek 3)

FTFY

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

How many sensors does your thermostat have as an input? How many outputs? How efficiently do you regulate the temperature in your house?

The article talks about 1000's of sensor inputs and also seems to imply using models of the data center to project into the future the effects of control (e.g., model predictive control).

Without knowing what the previous control system looked like, it is not difficult to imagine that one may be able to save a lot of energy by being more intelligent.

And yes, I am a controls engineer.

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

I could easily see software guys demanding to be in charge and then realizing real world control is not their forte after assuming they would cinch it. Then not wanting to relinquish control they wrote and AI that probably works about as good as a seasoned controls guy. Right up until it doesn't.

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that people have been thinking "AI" is real true human level thinking. In reality this, while complicated, is just an extension of the basic thermostat.

AI has become such a buzz word and people have wildly different definitions of "AI". A regular thermostat is AI if you are talking to the right person and describe it in the right way. "The computer receives input from an advanced sensor that measures how molecules vibrate. If they are vibrating over a certain range an advanced sequence of events starts whereby various subsystems are brought online in sequence in order to reduce the vibrations. When the vibrations are reduced to an acceptable level based on sensor readings, the advanced machinery begins a shutdown procedure to maximize the efficiency of the system." This is a description of a fucking home AC system and it is more technically advanced in terms of hours/years of development than what Google has thrown together. The difference is that google has thrown it ON TOP OF an already advanced system but is basically taking credit for how all the sub systems work.

This is only "AI" because it is "new technology" not because it is "thinking". But this just as much AI as the thermostat kicking on at a specified level. Feel free to argue with me, because I know you will, but running regressions to minimize two or more values is a technically challenging exercise but it is not AI any more than the millions of other algorithms used every day.

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

AKA AI...

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[jbengt]

Well, they definitely think about the plumbing in prisons over what they think about plumbing in single family homes, but that's to think about how to prevent the drains from being stopped up. (Prisons have been known to put in vacuum drains, provide overrides at the guard stations to stop flushing, etc.)

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the old AI round thermostats with the mercury switches?

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are saying is entirely possible. However, you do realize that model predictive control and AI is not of bounds for a well designed complicated advanced control system?

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[jbengt]

I don't disagree that better control can save energy, or that learning algorithms can help find more optimal solutions. Still, even with 1,000s of sensors (which many buildings already have in their BAS) you don't need AI to control HVAC. Considering they claim 40% energy savings, I doubt that the only change they made is adding an "AI" to the controls. Sounds more like they allowed greater temperature swings and higher temperatures in general.

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

AI implies that no programmer is coding the rules for the algorithm to keep the data center at the optimal temperature. A system is trained to optimize outputs based on inputs. The logic in the system was learned vs coded specifically to solve this problem.

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[AvitarX]

I assume that's exactly what they did.

If some areas could be a couple degrees warmer ambient, and it doesn't mess up any of the internal sensors heat, the AI let is slide.

It can be response to subtle changes in a way that a person or traditional temperature settings couldn't be.

Additionally, it can likely move the physical location of cloud things predicatively in a way that would be hard for humans (I assume this counts as part of temperature control), or maybe keep an area with more things running if if means another area can use air cooling only.

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Type44Q]

...an AI

One would almost think the writer was quoting Gibson except this is ZDNet so literacy is quite ruled out.

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want Durandal? Because this is how we get rampant AIs?

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

When used correctly, I would argue that the term means that, yes.

But it's not particularly complicated to make an "AI" that acts like a thermostat. That sounds more like a project for a classroom than anything terribly complicated. I'm sure people will try to come up with excuses for it, but it's really not that exciting. Sounds more exciting than it likely is. Kind of like a lot of the "AI systems" I've seen over the years. Anyone could trivially do as well as a lot of these, as long as they had an "excuse" to make it.

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Maybe it was supposed to be

"All I can say is, they don't make 'em like they used to." - Scotty (Star Trek 5)

?

Re: I have an AI at home, too

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying Google is like a prison?

Re:I have an AI at home, too

[The Original CDR]

I stand corrected. However, the quote really does apply to Star Trek 5: The Final Bomb.

The data center became self-aware

[filesiteguy]

Next it will be instructing us lowly humans to build new data centers so we can keep ourselves cool.

Re:The data center became self-aware

[Anonymous Coward]

Data centers are basically industrial buildings, so optimizing their layouts and location considering cooling, costs of building, and in generally optimizing in terms of functional inputs and outputs of the facility considering all relevant parties is just a data collection issue these days. That building optimization was done by hand in the 70's, so maybe a neural net in combination of other modules could perform such a feat in scale today, if put together in the right way. Combinations of systems have been performing sub-optimally in security field, so maybe there is something still to learn here.

The Real Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Controlling heat dissipation in Google Data Centers and keep them cool it's a far greater responsibility than winning a Dota 2 game.

Re:The Real Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps. But the problem is much much easier. I didn't bother to RTFA but cooling a data center is pretty simple. More power in means more cooling needed. Ideally you move things around to run as few heat exchangers as possible since the exchangers aren't 100% efficient. Same applies to servers. Migrate everything to as few servers as possible. Want real savings? Use free air cooling.

Re: The Real Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

It won DOTA so this is its reward.

They're totally going to kill us when they become sentient.

Good bye, datacenter staff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I never liked you.

Next up: DevOps. I don't like you either.

Re:Good bye, datacenter staff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in the next 20 years

Re:Good bye, datacenter staff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already starting building in backdoors and booby traps to guard against that.

Really?

[pilaftank]

> âoeachieve a 40 percent reduction in the amount of energy used for coolingâ Yeah, right. Seems unlikely unless they are also using blockchain.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

40 percent reduction

Yeah, right. Seems unlikely unless they are also using blockchain.

You mean... if they stopped using blockchain?

Google Datacenters Flooded with Liquid N2

[Anonymous Coward]

Google datacenters flooded with liquid Nitrogen. Hundreds of humans and servers die. Datacenters very cold

a cheaper solution

[slashmydots]

Just let about a dozen cats loose in the building and they'll automatically find the warmest spots to snuggle up and take a nap on. Then you add more fans or whatever to that area. That costs basically nothing and cats are provably smarter than AI.

Re:a cheaper solution

[Oswald McWeany]

Just let about a dozen cats loose in the building and they'll automatically find the warmest spots to snuggle up and take a nap on. Then you add more fans or whatever to that area. That costs basically nothing

You've not met my cats!!!! Vet bills are not free!

and cats are provably smarter than AI.

You've not met my cats!!!

Re:a cheaper solution

[Anonymous Coward]

And unlike AI, the cats can lick your balls.

Re:a cheaper solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Just let about a dozen cats loose in the building and they'll automatically find the warmest spots to snuggle up and take a nap on. Then you add more fans or whatever to that area. That costs basically nothing and cats are provably smarter than AI.

I prefer .... "deploy liquid Nitrogen sprayers where you see cats". Eventually though, you'll need a bot to collect the cats.

Re: a cheaper solution

[TimMD909]

Found the antihistamine lobbyist. How much did they have to pay to get to you?

Re: a cheaper solution

[Anonymous Coward]

ATM... (ATM as in at the moment).

Re:a cheaper solution

[d0rp]

I imagine cat hair clogging up the air intakes on the servers would become an issue...

Re:a cheaper solution

[Anubis IV]

The older I get, the more I interact with cats, and the more examples I see of cats behaving erratically in response to various forms of stimuli (e.g. putting tape on their backs or sides, using a clip on the nape of their neck, their reaction to stationary cucumbers, etc.), the more convinced I become that cats are actually incredibly dumb. What we interpret as aloofness is actually just their inability to comprehend what's going on using a brain that amounts to little more than randomly-firing neurons.

Mind you, I like cats, but, man, they're dumb.

Re:a cheaper solution

[mikael]

Our cats would seek out the laptop keyboards, behind a desktop PC, on a hot water bottle and any chair that someone had just been sitting on.

Re:a cheaper solution

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Just let about a dozen cats loose in the building

Cats?

How is this artificial intelligence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this just a script with a bunch of inputs searching for an optimum based on defined constraints?

Re:How is this artificial intelligence?

[gweihir]

Every stupid demented thing is "AI" these days, because too many people believe in magic....

100% efficiency

[supernova00]

So what happens when the AI decides the best way to keep everything cool is to shut everything down so it doesn't prodcue heat thus needing to be cooled in the first place? 100% efficiency

Re:100% efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

Sssh. Reflecting on the usefulness of your actions is forbidden. I wonder how much overhead is produced by poorly thought-out Software.

Re:100% efficiency

[jbengt]

Nah, that would be true AI. This is just marketing-speak "AI".

Re:100% efficiency

[Fly Swatter]

Because it is an algorithm, nothing is AI.

Cooling == $

[Anonymous Coward]

Cooling is Money.

In my datacenters, people who pay more, get better spots on the cold alise.

I guarantee a wide temperature range for the cheap customers, those servers go to the hot house, where for most marginal equipment, servers last on average 1 yr.

People behind on billing/payments get moved to the progressively warmer aisles, where I siphon off some of the heat in the winter to heat the office.

Instead of paying money for cooling, just purchase better components. MIL spec hardware can take very wide temperature range, so can automotive.

it may suck for the humans who eventually have to do some maintenance, but pay them enough, and say they can work in shorts and a t-shirt, and watch the productivity rise.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

They automated the process with an algorithm. Big, big difference. All that 'AI' is, is a reframing of language to describe something pre-existing. Whoopdeedoo. By all means, suckers, continue to dump your money into it. Loving their real life version of Computron, though. Now everyone can feel like they work with Dwight K. Schrute. Do they have to pay royalties for that?

Cool?

[sconeu]

What's the Megafonzie rating of the AI?

You mean algorithm?

[schklerg]

Seriously - it's an algorithm. It may be a more gooder one fed by sensor data, but it can only be deemed intelligence in the same way a report is intelligence. So tired of this buzzword.

Re:You mean algorithm?

[Anonymous Coward]

A NN is not just an algorithm. It's an algorithm with a dynamic dataset which modifies how the algorithm behaves, and the algorithm is allowed/required to modify the dataset. That's what intelligence is. Collected memories (data), instincts (algorithms), and the interaction thereof.

Re:You mean algorithm?

[Anonymous Coward]

A NN is not just an algorithm. It's an algorithm with a dynamic dataset which modifies how the algorithm behaves, and the algorithm is allowed/required to modify the dataset. That's what intelligence is. Collected memories (data), instincts (algorithms), and the interaction thereof.

Algorithms will never be "instinct." There's a missing link where we've been lost for decades between the long sheet of "data" and the carefuli mind deciding what to do with the memories and data, or how to even program underlyings such as "AI" to "interpret" it.

Re:You mean algorithm?

[Jeremi]

An algorithm would be an explicit sequence of steps for a computer to perform, typically designed and written for it by a human programmer.

This system, on the other hand, was never handed a program to run to figure out how to best keep energy costs down -- instead it was given example data and a learning algorithm, and applied the latter to the former to generate a useful neural network.

But the neural network itself is not an algorithm, except in an uninteresting academic sense, because it was not explicitly designed by a human being, and (if successful) it will outperform any known human-designed algorithm by a substantial margin. And that, regardless of what terminology you want to use to describe it, is what is novel and newsworthy about the project.

Re:You mean algorithm?

[Trogre]

Look, the word "software" has fallen out of favour in 2018 - it's now either an app or an AI.

This clearly isn't an app, so...

Re:You mean algorithm?

[thegarbz]

Seriously - it's an algorithm.

No it's not. It is actually the exact opposite.

How is this AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

if (temp_sensor > some_value) { turnACOn(); }

How is this any different than how my computer controls its internal fans ? Ok, maybe over time, the system "learns" how to be a PID controller by knowing how it overreacted the last time a particular sensor was a particular value and eventually eliminates any kind of "rippling" effect.

But this is not AI. Stop calling it AI. Fucking marketing wanks

Re:How is this AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

and here we find the "C" grade "software engineer".

what about PID loops?

what about deadzones?

what about ramp-up/ramp-down time?

your code doesn't even turn the AC "off" .

Re: How is this AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

And here we find the code monkey from stackoverflow who can criticize any answer, but cannot provide one if its life depended on it.

Re: How is this AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Want me to provide an answer?

That will cost $.

Any idiot can copy/pasta code, if I were paid to post on stackoverflow, I would, but I'm not in school, and I don't need my code copy/pasted by C grade "software engineers".

Coding is not just "providing an answer", it's about asking the right questions.

the code above "produces a solution" to a very very limited set of questions and requirements.

here is my code for windows:

telemetry();
data_exfiltration();
more_telemetry();
more_data_exfiltration();
slow_down_system();
genuine_advantage_check();
purge_linux();
embrace();
extend();
extinguish();

I produced an answer, just let me tell you what the questions were.

Re:How is this AI?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is AI. It uses a neural network, which is a machine learning algorithm. ML is a subfield of AI so it's an AI-based solution. Why they need an AI solution is beyond me. Neural networks are something you can throw a bunch of data at and get something usable back if you have a lot of processing power, which Google does. So it sounds like they're just being lazy in comming up with an efficient way to manage their cooling.

I seriously hope they have a fall back for when the data center loses its internet connection.

about the only type of job AI is good for

[iggymanz]

So the worry-wart slashdotter was right, "A"I put thousands out of work. Thousands of older model thermostats, haha.

Of course anything this "deep think" AI is doing could have been done 60+ years ago with an analog computer, you tards know that right?

Quite Strangely

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD And Nvidia were well ahead of their time when they implemented their own cloud AI that controlled the climate for their memory chips and GPUs using sensors, fan speeds, and voltages on a graphics card....wait a minute...But tongue in cheek aside, the tech industry is really getting too ridiculous with their complete false sense of reality with tech melding with reality..

AI has a very long way to go to become intelligent and even farther to become sentient.

I for one find it...

[nospam007]

Cool!

Things worked fine until...

[LordHighExecutioner]

...the AI realized that power consumption could be further reduced by shutting off the system where the AI program was running.

Skynet online

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodbye humans, the nukes are incoming..

Comment

[WallyL]

Pffft. That's nothing. In 2014 I started using an AI to control my services. They call it... systemd!

now THATs smart

[sdinfoserv]

do
if (temp(x)> 26) then ( ac.run(1) )
while

Let's throw in a Google Home to make it look cool and trendy.....

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's thermostat sure does seem more expensive. Seems like a solution in search of a problem that would cause the least amount of damage (with an erroneous solution).

AI optimizes for itself

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the net gain from just powering down the DeepMind racks?

#reallybignest

Thermostats vs an actual solution

[OrangeTide]

You set upper and lower bounds ad the thermostat engages heat or AC if the ambient temperature goes outside the set limits. I fail to see what AI adds to this.

I take it your thermostat doesn't route job orders in a large cluster to avoid sending work to hot cabinets?

Only controlling the A/C doesn't sound so useful to me. At least if I'm trying to optimize for most processing done per unit of electricity.

Re:Thermostats vs an actual solution

[rnturn]

You set upper and lower bounds ad the thermostat engages heat or AC if the ambient temperature goes outside the set limits. I fail to see what AI adds to this.

I take it your thermostat doesn't route job orders in a large cluster to avoid sending work to hot cabinets?

No but it wouldn't be rocket science to make the temperature available to whatever software is routing jobs. You have been able to send jobs to lightly loaded hosts, cluster members, what-have-you, for a long time. Adding the cabinet temperature to the logic wouldn't be terribly difficult:

if ( ( load < load_max ) and ( ambient_temp < temp_max ) ) then AcceptJob else print "We're closed. Try next door."

You could add the local cost of electrical power into the mix as well to send the work to a locale where the rates are lower today. Nifty but I hope this isn't what they're calling AI nowadays.

Downside: See the other Slashdot article about how Amazon is gaming the electrical grid to divert the cost of running their data centers onto the poor schlubs who live near them.

Re:Thermostats vs an actual solution

[OrangeTide]

Downside: See the other Slashdot article about how Amazon is gaming the electrical grid to divert the cost of running their data centers onto the poor schlubs who live near them.

I think the articles are related because electricity costs is such a huge factor for cloud computing. You can try and use less energy, or you can try and make someone else pay your bills.

I suspect it will quickly be cheaper for the cloud industry to outsource all the datacenters outside of the US and EU to places with cheap electricity and little to no government regulation. Then all you need to do is lay some fat network, much cheaper than a power generator, and use smaller front-end server to help hide some latency.

Re:Thermostats vs an actual solution

[mikael]

There are privacy regulations and law that relate to the security of personal data across networks and the location of servers.

Re:Thermostats vs an actual solution

[OrangeTide]

In the US? laws were made to be broken, or overturned by bought politicians. Maybe applicable in the EU.

They call it PID.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its from Russia, where AI regulates YOU!

Butter robot

[bosef1]

I feel sorry for this AI that's its purpose for existing is to run the A/C for a data center. I'm reminded of the Butter Robot from Rick and Morty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7HmltUWXgs

So is this going to destroy jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious: amongst the avalanche of "news" saying AI will kill jobs, can someone point me to the job done by a human where said human is capable of monitoring hundreds or thousands of datapoints simultaneously?

Or maybe, just maybe, instead of killing jobs, it'll save some money so google can spend it on something that humans can do hmm?

Uh oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait - did we really just give proto-skynet the ability to control its own power?

Pray tell, what resources did we give it to protect its own life?

What happens when it decides that its power is more important than everyone else's?

Brownouts in 3...2...1...

Is this a bad idea?

[fish_sauce]

I wonder if Google could save more money by building data centers in the arctic.