National Grid is reportedly in talks with Google's machine-learning company DeepMind to see how the British firm's artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be used to help manage supply and demand and across the energy system. Speaking to the Financial Times (£), DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis said the company was in the "early stages" of discussions with the system operator to determine the role AI could have in managed the grid. "It would be amazing if you could save 10% of the country's energy usage without any new infrastructure, just from optimisation. That's pretty exciting," he told the FT. DeepMind added that there is particular interest in helping to better integrate renewable energy onto the grid by using machine learning to predict peaks in demand and supply, adding that it was in the process of exploring a "possible partnership".

The Google-owned star British artificial intelligence company DeepMind is in talks with the National Grid about a potential partnership, with the possibility of using the technology to make the supply of energy across the UK more efficient. "There's huge potential for predictive machine learning technology to help energy systems reduce their environmental impact," said a spokesperson for the company. "One really interesting possibility is whether we could help the National Grid maximise the use of renewables through using machine learning to predict peaks in demand and supply." DeepMind's AI technology, which became famous after beating a human player at the chess-like game Go, has already been put to work for Google, reducing the energy needed for cooling its data centres by 40 per cent last year and increasing efficiency by 15 per cent. And co-founder Mustafa Suleyman outlined last year his hopes that this same technique could be applied to the National Grid and other large scale infrastructure. Read more: Here's how Google's DeepMind is using blockchain-like technology Now that has developed into early-stage talks taking place more recently between DeepMind – named City A.M's most innovative company of the year at the City A.M. Awards – and the National Grid, although there is no guarantee of anything being agreed.

For Silicon Valley, the headline was sweet nectar: Google DeepMind, the world's hottest artificial intelligence lab, embraces the blockchain, the endlessly fascinating idea at the heart of the bitcoin digital currency. The lab's re-imagining of the blockchain has very little to do with AI--or the blockchain, for that matter. If you want AI crossed with the blockchain, try wrapping your head around Numerai, the world's strangest hedge fund. To DeepMind's credit, its new project depends less on trendy ideas than an apparent desire to solve a real problem in the real world--one that involves the most private and personal information. DeepMind is building an auditing system for healthcare data. That may not sound sexy, but it matters.

DeepMind, the Google-owned artificial intelligence company, is developing a new technology similar to blockchain for secure tracking of patient health data. In a blog post, London-based DeepMind said its new Verifiable Data Audit project could be the first steps toward a "a service that could give mathematical assurance about what is happening with each individual piece of personal data, without possibility of falsification or omission." The aim is to enable hospitals, and eventually patients, to gain real-time insight into where and how data is being used. "For example, an organization holding health data can't simply decide to start carrying out research on patient records being used to provide care, or repurpose a research dataset for some other unapproved use," according to DeepMind. "It's not just where the data is stored, it's what's being done with it that counts. We want to make that verifiable and auditable, in real-time, for the first time."

For Silicon Valley, the headline was sweet nectar: Google DeepMind, the world's hottest artificial intelligence lab, embraces the blockchain, the endlessly fascinating idea at the heart of the bitcoin digital currency. The lab's re-imagining of the blockchain has very little to do with AI--or the blockchain, for that matter. If you want AI crossed with the blockchain, try wrapping your head around Numerai, the world's strangest hedge fund. To DeepMind's credit, its new project depends less on trendy ideas than an apparent desire to solve a real problem in the real world--one that involves the most private and personal information. DeepMind is building an auditing system for healthcare data. That may not sound sexy, but it matters.

Forays by Google subsidiary DeepMind Health into the UK's medical institutions have been characterized by two major themes. First, amazing results powered by cutting-edge AI; and second, a lack of transparency over the handling of the UK's public-funded data. With the science going swimmingly, DeepMind Health is focusing more than ever on reassuring UK citizens that their medical records are in safe hands. Its latest plan is a public ledger that shows which bits of data it's using; when; and for what purposes. The initiative is called the "Verifiable Data Audit," and was announced this week in a blogpost written by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and the company's head of security and transparency, Ben Laurie.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere: your smartphone, on streaming platforms such as Spotify and Netflix and even in some smart home appliances. But can the technology, which has seemingly caught the attention of most VCs across the world, be used in the realm of healthcare to drive efficiency and optimise patient outcomes? We take a look at some of the UK's most promising companies using AI to transform the healthcare space. No list of this kind would be complete without a mention of DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence company founded in 2010 and acquired by tech giant Google for a reported £400m four years later. DeepMind Health is leveraging machine learning technology – a form of AI – to boost the medical research field.

Google's AI-powered health tech subsidiary, DeepMind Health, is planning to use a new technology loosely based on bitcoin to let hospitals, the NHS and eventually even patients track what happens to personal data in real-time. Dubbed "Verifiable Data Audit", the plan is to create a special digital ledger that automatically records every interaction with patient data in a cryptographically verifiable manner. This means any changes to, or access of, the data would be visible. DeepMind has been working in partnership with London's Royal Free Hospital to develop kidney monitoring software called Streams and has faced criticism from patient groups for what they claim are overly broad data sharing agreements. Critics fear that the data sharing has the potential to give DeepMind, and thus Google, too much power over the NHS.

In 1952, Professor Sandy Douglas created a tic-tac-toe game on the EDSAC, a room-sized computer at the University of Cambridge. One of the first ever computer games, it was developed as part of a thesis on human-computer interaction. Forty-five years later, in 1997, another milestone occurred when IBM's Deep Blue machine defeated Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. This was followed by Watson, again created by IBM, which appeared on the Jeopardy! Yet another breakthrough was Google's DeepMind AlphaGo, which in 2016 defeated the Go world champion Lee Se-dol at a tournament in South Korea.

The British Artificial Intelligence (AI) company DeepMind Technologies, a subsidiary of Google, recently revealed it will be utilizing a blockchain technology. The firm will use a distributed ledger application to better secure patient data. DeepMind is a software firm that builds algorithms for simulations, applications, and gaming protocols. The company is well known for creating a machine learning platform that learns how to play video games. DeepMind has also built a Neural Turing Machine which mimics a human's short-term memory.