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\u00a0Artificial intelligence (AI) lab DeepMind has shifted its focus from climate change to other areas of science and is pursuing its original mission of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is widely seen as the holy grail of the nascent technology, according to several people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
While DeepMind,\u00a0acquired\u00a0by\u00a0Google in 2014 for $600 million, denies it has shifted its focus, several key climate change researchers that were part of the company\u2019s energy unit have left the company over the last two years, and it has made few climate change-related announcements.<\/p>\n
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The energy unit, which has attracted its fair share of attention over the years, has vanished and none of the company\u2019s staff mention it on their LinkedIn profiles, based on analysis. When asked about this, a DeepMind spokesperson said: \u201cOver time we\u2019ve moved away from a narrower focus on domains, and cross-functional teams across DeepMind now contribute to our growing set of climate and sustainability projects.\u201d<\/p>\n
They added: \u201cAs well as ongoing partnerships with Google to scale the benefits of our energy-saving technology, we have new projects underway in several areas, including more efficient approaches to machine learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the DeepMind\u2019s early and perhaps most successful projects involved slashing Google\u2019s enormous electricity bill, instantly reducing the company\u2019s carbon footprint. The search giant, technically a sister company to DeepMind as they\u2019re both run by Alphabet,\u00a0announced in July 2016\u00a0that it had been able to reduce the energy consumption of its data center cooling units \u2014 used to stop Google\u2019s servers from overheating \u2014 by as much as 40% with the help of a DeepMind AI system.<\/p>\n
DeepMind didn\u2019t stop there. It has been working with the Google Cloud division on\u00a0a new platform\u00a0that provides AI control of cooling systems in commercial and industrial facilities.<\/p>\n
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in\u00a0a blog post\u00a0in September that DeepMind and Google Cloud are making the platform available globally for use by airports, shopping malls, hospitals, data centers and other commercial buildings and industrial facilities. However, DeepMind and Google Cloud are yet to give any specific examples of where and how the platform is being used.<\/p>\n
In 2017, DeepMind started recruiting more experts at Google\u2019s sprawling new campus in London\u2019s King\u2019s Cross neighborhood to investigate how AI could be used to slow the effects of global warming. It formed a new team called \u201cDeepMind Energy,\u201d run by Jim Gao, a former Google technical lead who spearheaded the data center project with DeepMind. Gao declined to comment on this story.<\/p>\n
DeepMind Energy grew to around 14 people and was tasked with dreaming up new AI technologies to fight climate change.<\/p>\n
In 2019, DeepMind Energy announced its first big win. It had\u00a0boosted the revenue\u00a0Google made from its wind farms in the U.S. by around 20%. The wind farms form part of Google\u2019s network of renewable energy projects.<\/p>\n
DeepMind\u2019s AI was used to predict the energy output of the wind farms up to 36 hours ahead of actual generation \u2014 worthwhile, because energy sources that can be scheduled to deliver a set amount of energy at a set time are often of more value to the grid.<\/p>\n
While the company\u2019s achievements are significant, it has yet to publicly confirm where and how its energy-saving AI has been applied beyond Google\u2019s data centers and wind farms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At one point, DeepMind wanted to use its AI technology\u00a0to optimize National Grid, which owns and operates the infrastructure that provides electricity to homes and businesses around Britain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re early stages talking to National Grid and other big providers about how we could look at the sorts of problems they have,\u201d DeepMind Chief Executive Demis Hassabis said in an\u00a0interview with The Financial Times\u00a0in March 2017. \u201cIt would be amazing if you could save 10% of the country\u2019s energy usage without any new infrastructure, just from optimisation. That\u2019s pretty exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last March, it emerged that\u00a0talks had broken down\u00a0between DeepMind and National Grid. The organizations spent a considerable amount of time working together, sometimes at a National Grid facility near Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, but there were many hurdles to overcome if anything was ever going to be implemented.<\/p>\n
Humayun Sheikh, an early investor who backed DeepMind\u2019s seed round, told that commercializing the company\u2019s AI software is difficult, adding that the company would have \u201cprobably failed\u201d without Google.<\/p>\n
Sheikh, who claims to have spent five years discussing the idea behind DeepMind with Hassabis before it was incorporated, said: \u201cThe concern, the question marks, have always been in commercialization. How do you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Sheikh said National Grid may have had concerns about being tied into a deal with a large corporation like Google.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI don\u2019t think the model which DeepMind or any of these big machine learning and AI companies use is workable … unless it\u2019s provided as a service. But then the problem comes with the data, the GDPR issues.\u201d GDPR is a set of data protection and privacy regulations introduced by the European Union in May 2018.<\/p>\n
The talks between DeepMind and National Grid ultimately broke down because they couldn\u2019t agree on the financial details, according to a source familiar with the matter who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the discussion. \u201cThe money DeepMind was asking was outrageous,\u201d the source said. \u201cMost of their work is internal and they bill Google for it,\u201d the source added. \u201cThey sell the work of their AI engineers at super inflated prices, and not at the price that the market values their output.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked about this, a DeepMind spokesperson said: \u201cWe engaged in early-stage exploration around the application of AI to optimize the UK\u2019s electricity grid. This mutual effort was highly collaborative, and resulted in many shared ideas for how technology can improve grid efficiency and resilience. This exploration has now concluded and we don\u2019t currently have any further work planned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gary Marcus, CEO of robotics company Robust AI, and co-author of \u201cRebooting AI,\u201d which critically analyzes the industry and suggests how to advance it further, told that the technology may not have worked well enough for National Grid to justify the cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir primary technique, deep reinforcement learning, works best in well-controlled environments, such as board games, and may struggle with the complexity and unpredictability of the real world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sheikh added: \u201cThe technology might not have worked because it\u2019s not really that mature.\u201d<\/p>\n
National Grid declined to comment.<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0podcast interview\u00a0published in October Hassabis reiterated that DeepMind\u2019s AI software \u201ccould be applied at a grid scale,\u201d suggesting he hasn\u2019t given up. \u201cWe\u2019d love to try that at some point and save energy at a national scale,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While things didn\u2019t go according to plan with National Grid in the U.K., DeepMind may look to engage in talks with other governments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
With around 1,000 staff, DeepMind\u2019s workforce is divided into those who focus on research and those who focus on applying DeepMind\u2019s AI. Doing research and publishing papers don\u2019t solve real-world problems, which is why the applied branch was set up. Like the DeepMind Health division,\u00a0absorbed by Google last year, DeepMind Energy is aligned with the applied unit of the company.<\/p>\n
The applied unit was led by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, but he\u00a0left in December 2019, shocking many colleagues and followers of the company. Known as \u201cMoose\u201d to friends and colleagues, the entrepreneur, who has been described as an activist and visionary by colleagues and the media, now has a policy role at Google. Suleyman declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Several members of the DeepMind Energy team left the company just before or after Suleyman\u2019s exit. Gao\u00a0left a few months before\u00a0Suleyman to launch his own start-up with fellow DeepMinder Vedavyas Panneershelvam, while DeepMind Energy research engineer\u00a0Jack Kelly also left to launch his own start-up.<\/p>\n
The driving forces behind DeepMind\u2019s climate change focus were Gao and Suleyman, two people with knowledge of the company who preferred to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the topic told CNBC, adding it was perhaps inevitable that DeepMind\u2019s work in this area would slow after their departures. The DeepMind Energy team that worked on some of DeepMind\u2019s biggest climate projects is almost non-existent today.<\/p>\n
DeepMind said that it has not reduced its efforts directed toward climate change .<\/p>\n
One of CNBC\u2019s sources claims that Hassabis has chosen to pull some of the company\u2019s climate change funding and allocate it to other areas.<\/p>\n
Last month, the company announced it has developed a piece of AI software called \u201cAlphaFold\u201d that can\u00a0accurately predict the structure that proteins will fold into\u00a0in a matter of days, solving a 50-year-old \u201cgrand challenge\u201d that could pave the way for better understanding of diseases and drug discovery. However, some\u00a0scientists have questioned\u00a0whether DeepMind has \u201csolved\u201d protein folding.<\/p>\n
On a call with journalists, Hassabis said: \u201cThe ultimate vision behind DeepMind has always been to build general AI, and then use it to help us better understand the world around us by greatly accelerating the pace of scientific discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
A DeepMind spokesperson added: \u201cWe\u2019ve made some great progress and delivered impact, including boosting the predicted value of Google\u2019s wind energy by roughly 20% and reducing energy usage for cooling in Google data centers by up to 40%, and overall energy efficiency by 15%.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, Google Cloud is offering this to commercial and industrial clients as a platform solution, helping businesses across the world make their facilities more sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n
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