Google's 400 million acquisition of London AI startup DeepMind just got very interesting

Google forked out over 600 million ( 400 million) for a little-known London startup called DeepMind in 2014 without specifying how the company's artificial-intelligence technology would be used to increase Google's revenues, which already run into tens of billions of dollars every year. That all changed Wednesday when DeepMind announced that Google had found a use for DeepMind's technology in its enormous data centres. Since being acquired by Google, DeepMind's AI has been used to beat humans at board games and create free apps with the National Health Service. Neither application has helped Google make, or save, any money. But now Google is using a DeepMind-built AI system to control the huge air-conditioning units in its power-hungry data centres, where servers consume enough energy to power entire cities and get very hot in the process. The AI does this by predicting how much air conditioning will be needed to deal with an anticipated change in data-centre temperature, which fluctuates as demand for services like YouTube, Google Maps, and Gmail rises and falls.