Breaking through the hype – Neural networks and AI in the utility world

The following is a contributed article by Peter Kirk, Business Operations Executive at GE Power Digital Solutions. With all of the press that neural networks have been getting recently, you may be asking yourself, "What is a neural network, and should I be intrigued or scared?" A neural network is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that is loosely modeled after the human brain, and it can help solve real-world problems in the energy sector and beyond. Whether it's a threat or salvation depends on how it's used. In the 1990s, after the last AI hype cycle, a popular way to thumb one's nose at AI was to point out that neural models could generate a 24-hour weather forecast that is more accurate than a meteorologist -- it only takes 48 hours on a supercomputer to do so.