The artificial intelligence that cut Google's energy bill could soon help you

Google is using a powerful new machine-learning approach to save huge amounts of energy (and hundreds of millions of dollars) each year at its vast data centers. It might not be long before the technique, which involves a machine-learning algorithm gradually learning to perfect a task with positive reinforcement, catches on in a range of other areas. Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, a subsidiary based in the U.K. that is focused on artificial intelligence, said at a conference recently that Google was using techniques developed by his company to improve the energy efficiency of its data centers. Because Google spends so much on electricity for the buildings that house its massive server farms, a savings of just a few percent equals hundreds of millions of dollars per year. DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014 for around 600 million, has shown how large artificial neural networks combined with reinforcement learning can train computers to perform complex tasks incredibly well.