Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

arstechnica.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 115 posts

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#51

Post by javiermaestro »

anothercomment wrote: post #49
javiermaestro wrote: post #13

Heh. If only they mandate to replace a majority of the crappy wooden + single-pane windows they have in most houses, that let all of the heat out and wind and noise in, with normal, double-glaze windows with good insulation, they would cut the energy footprint in HALF, I'm sure...

I suppose you are joking, as double-glazing seems to be a popular meme in the UK (with people being convinced they don't need it and scammy vendors pushing it)? Must admit I never completely understood it, coming from a country where double glazing is the norm.

Can't understand your comment. You are agreeing with me that, in most other parts of the world, double-glazing (aka a glass that won't break if you elbow it by mistake!) is the norm. But in the UK, it's sadly the opposite. So we agree that they should replace their crappy windows with double-glazed, properly insulated, ones...

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#52

Post by zodiac »

chatmasta wrote: post #31
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #5

The DeepMind datacenter project was very interesting, but a lot of the ML people I spoke to were quite dubious about how much of it was genuinely down to new AI/neural networks, and how much of it was Google PR to justify how much they spent on DeepMind. > DeepMind trained a neural network to more accurately predict future cooling requirements, in turn reducing the power usage of the cooling system by 40 percent. But…

I think this question applies to all applications of machine learning. PR pieces love to label every application of ML to a novel field as "artificial intelligence," even when the predictions are simple enough to be predicted by statistical regression (and in many cases that's effectively what is happening). So yes, many applications of ML are something "a regular data science team could do." However, isn't the main…

That's true, but I've noticed quite a few pieces of deep learning NLP papers take pains to use competitive baselines (eg state-of-the-art non-DL techniques, more complicated than regression) and have heard that good venues will reject your paper/talk if use poor baselines

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#53

Post by javiermaestro »

lostboys67 wrote: post #42
javiermaestro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see the results... I've never been so baffled in my life, looking for a "normal" flat in London and looking at horrible prospects that cost a fortune with windows from a century ago. And when I asked about that, they were all saying "oh, but the house is listed! Can't change the windows unless X, Y, Z". Whatever. We can put people in a rocket and take them to the moon but we can't replace windows and make…

No You cant I looked at buying a grade2* listed property (mentioned in pevsner no less) 1800's alms house. You even had to use authentic rubbish paint on the doors

So that's what I'm saying. Instead of useless laws like that one, the Government should put a lot of weight and money and refurbish all of those windows, making them modern while using all those "original materials" or whatever they want.

Instead, I'm sure half the energy footprint goes to waste through those windows...

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#54

Post by br1n0 »

On the photo #4 you can see a man pointing a pretty insecure computer, windows xp :) Should Not be used xp anymore because there is no more security updates or I'm wrong?

The direct link of the image is: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/...

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#55

Post by KCFforecast »

I don't want to give any hint to the DeepMind, since I an inclined to think that in this field an expert assessment can be better that DeepMind advice. Just to give a simple question or example of the kind of knowledge involved in those predictions: Since energy generation and demand depends a lot of weather conditions, do they have any state of the art machine learning model to forecasting weather conditions?, can they predict the evolution of energy prices?, can they measure the impact of new improvement in reducing the cost in renewable energy, what about the impact of the brexit in the energy market?, are they first class experts in times series or are they simple to apply current technologies like profet or Hyndman's R package for ts. How can they defend that technologies applied at go game like reinforcement learning can be successfully applied to forecasting? Perfect games simulations allow you to get almost infinite data, current world market and weather has only very limited amount of information to be supplied for a model, how can they justify the application of big data techniques to a small available data world. I hope that some of those questions can be addressed, unfortunately while writing this I haven't read the post yet.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#56

Post by sweezyjeezy »

chatmasta wrote: post #31
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #5

The DeepMind datacenter project was very interesting, but a lot of the ML people I spoke to were quite dubious about how much of it was genuinely down to new AI/neural networks, and how much of it was Google PR to justify how much they spent on DeepMind. > DeepMind trained a neural network to more accurately predict future cooling requirements, in turn reducing the power usage of the cooling system by 40 percent. But…

I think this question applies to all applications of machine learning. PR pieces love to label every application of ML to a novel field as "artificial intelligence," even when the predictions are simple enough to be predicted by statistical regression (and in many cases that's effectively what is happening). So yes, many applications of ML are something "a regular data science team could do." However, isn't the main…

I don't think your second point follows from your first. ML is not easy to set up or maintain, even if we're just talking about linear regression. Companies trying to make 'data scientists obsolete', usually frame ML as a black box that you can plug data in one end and spit out profits the other. But in reality it doesn't work like that, significant effort has to build and maintain data pipelines, to make sure data quality is good, and to monitor that the ML model is doing anything useful in the end.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#57

Post by drzaiusapelord »

br1n0 wrote: post #54

On the photo #4 you can see a man pointing a pretty insecure computer, windows xp :) Should Not be used xp anymore because there is no more security updates or I'm wrong? The direct link of the image is: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/...

Enterprises can buy expensive support contracts direct from MS and still receive security updates. This is fairly common in big companies and with the government. There's articles about them paying for XP custom support from 2014, I'm assuming they still are.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/07/uk-govern...

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#58

Post by poooogles »

grey-area wrote: post #41
javiermaestro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing against wood, really. But if you've been to the UK, you should agree that the unmaintained, not-properly-fitted, wooden frames that they use in most old windows are just crap. They let in huge amounts of wind, cold, etc, through the unsealed seams. Anything that improved that would be 10 times better, regardless of the yellowing, etc.

Most wooden sash (I assume you're talking about wooden sash) were properly fitted at the time, but are victorian or edwardian and therefore over 100 years old. They've done pretty well considering their heritage. New wooden sash with double glazing are better IMO than plastic windows - as the parent noted, plastic doesn't do well long term when exposed to light.

>New wooden sash with double glazing are better IMO than plastic windows

Hugely, I think it's a testament to the design that they still look great today. Double glazed wooden sash windows are however much pricier than a uPVC alternative which puts them out of reach of many.

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#59

Post by poooogles »

javiermaestro wrote: post #36
poooogles wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crappy wooden I'm not sure where you got the gripe against wood from. It lasts longer than uPVC given maintenance every 5 years, looks better, is more environmentally friendly and has similar thermal properties. Oh and it doesn't go yellow.

Nothing against wood, really. But if you've been to the UK, you should agree that the unmaintained, not-properly-fitted, wooden frames that they use in most old windows are just crap. They let in huge amounts of wind, cold, etc, through the unsealed seams. Anything that improved that would be 10 times better, regardless of the yellowing, etc.

>you should agree that the unmaintained

Agreed, but wasn't this also an issue with steel windows in the 60s? uPVC put in in the early 90s already looks crap (IMO).

Re: DeepMind in “very early stage” talks with National Grid to reduce UK energy use

#60

Post by [deleted] »

br1n0 wrote: post #54

On the photo #4 you can see a man pointing a pretty insecure computer, windows xp :) Should Not be used xp anymore because there is no more security updates or I'm wrong? The direct link of the image is: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/...

[deleted]
Post reply on HN