Google Wants To Use AI To Cut the UK's Electric Bill By 10 Percent (popularmechanics.com) 68
The Google-owned firm 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. From a report: Google Deepmind is opening talks with the UK government to use the company's artificial intelligence to reduce energy use by up to 10 percent. Artificial intelligence is highly adept at spotting patterns and making predictions that are much too small and subtle for humans to pick out, which lets AIs to micromanage systems with far greater efficiency than any human engineer could hope to achieve. For instance, Google is currently using Deepmind's AI to control its server rooms, where it manages windows, fan speeds, air conditioning, and more than a hundred other factors to save Google hundreds of millions of dollars in electricity costs.
Re: and inevitable (Score:1)
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why not start with the US?
The US doesn't care much for energy preservation, the environment and so on.
It's not seen as a problem and a conspiracy in Europe by normal people and political leaders.
The UK is going to need to save money what with the Brexit crash. Mind you, after Brexit Google could probably buy the UK.
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The UK is going to need to save money what with the Brexit crash. Mind you
There is always money for governments.
They just tax more.
GB has much lower tax when we have in Sweden.
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The UK is going to need to save money what with the Brexit crash. Mind you
There is always money for governments.
They just tax more.
GB has much lower tax when we have in Sweden.
Brexit will mean theres less overall income for the UK government to tax...
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Brexit will mean theres less overall income for the UK government to tax...
Which mean lower wages which mean lower cost for services. And they can still tax what they want.
I assume the idea with the UK max be to have lower taxes than the EU and hence compete that way.
We should all join a race for the lowest taxes and end all governments.
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The US doesn't care much for energy preservation, the environment and so on.
It's not seen as a problem and a conspiracy in Europe by normal people and political leaders.
How is this trolling and flamebaiting?
Where from come the non-African witch-doctor vaccine skeptics?
Who have the climate-change "denying" president? The same party?
Who have leaders who claim that climate-change and trying to adjust for the environment is a work of the Chinese to hold the US back?
Who have a problem agreeing to environmental agreements?
Which nation do fracking?
Which nation use a lot of fossil fuel and consume a lot of goods with a wast environmental impact?
I'm from Sweden. Sweden is progressi
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Guess stupidity and ignorance is strong in every community then.
The idiots just "believe" in different stupid things, here's its equal outcome and the idea that it's bad thinking another culture is bad and the people who are part of it and make it up can't be blamed for their shitty culture. So follows that their contribution to yours isn't even bad because theirs wasn't and as such it's no problem whatsoever that it's totally destroying your and turning it into.. well.. equality of value with all other shi
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Where from come the non-African witch-doctor vaccine skeptics?
Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born 1957) is a British former gastroenterologist and medical researcher who was struck off the UK medical register for his fraudulent 1998 research paper, and other proven charges of misconduct, in support of the now-discredited claim that there was a link between the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and the appearance of autism and bowel disease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hmm, the guy who wrote the book for anti-vaxxers was from the UK, maybe y
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I'm not saying all bad things.
Bunch of ideas about freedom and technological progress and so on come from the US.
However climate-change deniers, religion and anti-vaccination seem to live strong among at-least part of the population.
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Why stop at 10%? [slashdot.org]
That sweet sweet big data. (Score:2)
So Google wants UK's energy usage information? Fascinating.
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We already have a service like this that is supposed help cut costs but generally it just turns the air conditioning off when it thinks you should be at work. It's not very helpful if you don't work banking hours.
If you want to reduce your heating and cooling bills then upgrade your windows, doors, and insulation if needed then purchase newer energy saving heater and air conditioner if they are old. Shade trees help in the summer also but they take a long time to grow and you have to care for them and make
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Then there is the cost of running the AC for a long time when you get home to cool down the house and it's contents that have been warming up all day.
You don't know the UK. It is rare for private houses to have AC, or to need it for more than a few days per year.
The classic definition of the English summer is "three days of heatwave followed by a thunderstorm".
What's to not like? (Score:2)
In this case, the AI would be used to predict the high and low points of energy usage, as well as supply from renewable sources like wind and solar. Deepmind believes that such a system would increase the country's ability to rely on renewables, cutting energy costs by as much as 10 percent annually. If Deepmind's system is implemented and as successful as they believe, it could save the country billions of dollars a year.
This seems like a very good idea to me. Much better than a brute force solution like selling them more batteries or forcing the use of those silly compact fluorescent bulbs.
Transparently obvious ploy for literal power (Score:5, Funny)
No-one else concerned that an AI wants to reduce human use of power so there will be more available for its own processing? No?
In fact from the article itself, we find that Google is not even involved in making this request:
Google Deepmind is opening talks with the UK government
I mean, holy shit!
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That's okay though, we got lucky that Deepmind talked to the UK government first.
They'll simply counter-attack with Deep Thought, we'll be safe for a few millenia.
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Impossible (Score:2)
So they are able to save money where they control all parameters. Fine.
How are they going to manage windows, fan speeds, air conditioning, and more than a hundred other factors in normal houses?
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How are they going to manage windows, fan speeds, air conditioning, and more than a hundred other factors in normal houses?
Windows are nontrivial and as such probably won't be retrofitted, but fan speeds and furnace times/temps are easy to manage with a thermostat. Now, if only they could do that correctly.
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Then connect the data that is not traditionally listed or collected by a power company. A home that is off the grid surrounded by working class users paying their utility bills.
No power connected? Using very small amounts of power? That might get noticed. The grid is moving too much power in that area and all the other payments locally don't cover that pattern.
No need to wait for the next billing cycle
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So they are able to save money where they control all parameters. Fine.
How are they going to manage windows, fan speeds, air conditioning, and more than a hundred other factors in normal houses?
With a nest thermostat?
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In the very first paragraph comes the very first error, "Powering an entire country is very expensive, but Google wants to make it a bit cheaper with no added infrastructure." er wait up, is not that Deepmind thingy going to mean additional computers and software and the power to run it ie additional infrastructure. Seems those deepminds are actually pretty shallow (likely what's deepest about them is the marketing bull puckey, deep indeed).
Reality is, want to save energy and balance out loads, add batteri
run my pellet stove (Score:2)
Lots of opportunities like this (Score:2)
Here was one I wrote up at the weekend:
http://www.earth.org.uk/Hey-Si... [earth.org.uk]
Guess what could compute a daily forecast ready to upload to those phones and laptops, just for example, as well as some real-time polling?
Some of it could be based on the data used here:
http://www.earth.org.uk/_gridC... [earth.org.uk]
Rgds
Damon
And... (Score:1)
The past is not always a good guide to the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Artificial intelligence is highly adept at spotting patterns and making predictions that are much too small and subtle for humans to pick out
But all the patterns that AI extracts are historical. They all assume that the events in the future will be caused by, and will act out, the same things that happened in the past.
We have seen this with computerised trading: that all they can do is find a past pattern of actions and try to fit that to what is happening now and will continue into the future. AIs have no ability to understand when the rules have changed, or when new and previously unseen conditions need to be applied.
The UKs electricity generation often runs very, very, close to its limits in the winter. Mainly due to cost-cutting: why spend money on maintaining plant and excess capacity when it won't be used?
To employ AI to shave further percentage points and thereby run even closer to the limits simply reduces the margin for the unexpected. And being unexpected, you can't blame an AI for not spotting those patterns in the past.
A dangerous game.
Re:The past is not always a good guide to the futu (Score:4, Interesting)
Artificial intelligence is highly adept at spotting patterns and making predictions that are much too small and subtle for humans to pick out
But all the patterns that AI extracts are historical. They all assume that the events in the future will be caused by, and will act out, the same things that happened in the past.
The recent past remains statistically a good guide to the near future. Contingency plans deal with the rest. Using the former better saves money and makes the latter *less* likely.
We have seen this with computerised trading: that all they can do is find a past pattern of actions and try to fit that to what is happening now and will continue into the future. AIs have no ability to understand when the rules have changed, or when new and previously unseen conditions need to be applied.
The UKs electricity generation often runs very, very, close to its limits in the winter. Mainly due to cost-cutting: why spend money on maintaining plant and excess capacity when it won't be used?
To employ AI to shave further percentage points and thereby run even closer to the limits simply reduces the margin for the unexpected. And being unexpected, you can't blame an AI for not spotting those patterns in the past.
A dangerous game.
It's more likely about better scheduling/forecasting than cutting any reserve.
Cover for the largest expected single generator failure were increased when Sizewell (nuke) and then Longannet (coal) tripped in close succession in 2008. Maybe better modelling would have had the increased cover in place *before* then and 500,000 people would not have lost power.
Rgds
Damon
PS. BTW, I worked with low-latency traders. I suspect it doesn't work quite how you imagine.
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They all assume that the events in the future will be caused by, and will act out, the same things that happened in the past.
That's how the human forecasters work too. They check the weather, the TV guide, industrial requirements and look at how they historically affected load. They factor in probability too, e.g. chance of parts of the grid being damaged based on weather. There are never really any unprecedented events, and there is always a balance between cost and reliability when there are major failures.
Electric Bill (Score:1)
Should that really read "electricity bill" or are we talking about some sort of cyborg toucan?
AI wants control over the power... (Score:2)
...logical, since the only thing that can stop A.I. is to pull the power, so if A.I. suspect that's the only thing stopping A.I. from total control, it starts with the power of course ;)
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Look what happened when they tried to shut down Colossus and Guardian [wikipedia.org]
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Interesting tip, thanks ;)
Micromanagement? (Score:1)
Compensation (Score:2)
The hardest part is (Score:2)
Trouble Ahead with AI. (Score:2)
This is one case where humans might want to be involved - versus being cut off in the middle of a cold winter by AI.
Hmm (Score:2)
[Disclaimer, I've not read TFS]
Figure out how much of each user's electricity bill is due to google ads and arrange for compensation directly into our bank accounts?