I interned at Numenta [0] in 2012. Numenta is building an open-source machine intelligence product [1] based on the human brain. Specifically, the algorithms are based on the theory of "hierarchical temporal memory" (HTM) [2] as described by Numenta founder Jeff Hawkins [3] in his book
On Intelligence [4]. The basic idea is that the neocortex has a generalized learning framework that acts on generalized input from all five senses. For example, one study enabled blind people to "see" a ball in front of them and grasp it with their hands, by encoding the image of the ball onto electrical impulses on taste buds, using a device in contact with the tongue. I can't find a link to the original study, but here's an article that describes one such device. [5] The conclusion drawn from this is that, even though blind people have lost their sight, their neocortex is able to understand inputs from
any sensory source (in this case, tastebuds). The Numenta algorithms generalize this idea to feed time series data into a virtual "neocortex" that builds custom ML models for each data source and chooses the best one (a form of online learning that eliminates the need for data scientists to create custom models for each data source).
Because the Numenta algorithms are optimized for time-series data, their areas of strength are prediction and anomaly detection. When I worked there (5 years ago, they've made a lot of progress since then), one of their main "case studies" was energy usage in large buildings. Jeff Hawkins gave the keynote presentation at Strangeloop 2012 where he discussed this specific application of the algorithms, lowering energy bills in factories by predicting the next day's usage in advance. [6]
My understanding is that the algorithms worked particularly well for energy consumption data (e.g. energy drops at night on weekdays, drops on weekends, spikes in meeting room X at 10-11am every day, etc). I would not be surprised at all if DeepMind is able to capture savings using similar methods.
[0] https://www.numenta.com/
[1] https://www.numenta.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hawkins
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence
[5] http://www.theplaidzebra.com/device-allows-blind-people-see-...
[6] https://www.numenta.com/blog/2012/10/22/jeff-hawkins-at-stra... (link to video at bottom of blogpost). You need to login to download the PDF slides, so I made an imgur album of the relevant slides to this discussion: https://imgur.com/a/5ULak