Google's DeepMind talks with National Grid to apply AI to energy use

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.