Alphabet Unit Targets AI For Optimizing Computing.

"Researchers at Google DeepMind, the Alphabet-owned artificial-intelligence research lab, announced on Wednesday a new AI system that could make computing more efficient and sustainable.

The latest breakthrough, published in the scientific journal Nature, focuses on the discovery of faster computer algorithms, which are fundamental for software development and are used by companies trillions of times a day, DeepMind said.

The London-based AI lab, known for pioneering AI models such as AlphaFold and AlphaGo, which mastered the complex game of Go, calls its new AI system AlphaDev. Based on AlphaZero, an iteration of AlphaGo, the system uses reinforcement learning, a form of machine learning in which computers learn and develop strategies on their own, to discover faster algorithms for computer-science functions such as sorting and hashing.

Sorting algorithms are used to order data for things such as ranking web-search results and the back-end systems of financial institutions. Hashing algorithms convert data into a unique string of characters so users can find what they are looking for in things such as databases. Because they are so widely used by companies, making these algorithms faster could significantly reduce the resources needed for computing.

"It means that we can carry out the same amount of computing using much fewer resources," said Colin Murdoch, DeepMind's chief business officer.

When applying AlphaDev to a C++ sorting library, the company said AlphaDev was up to 70% faster for smaller sorting tasks and 1.7% faster for large-scale sorting tasks. For hashing functions, AlphaDev discovered an algorithm that was 30% faster in the range of 9 to 16 bytes. Both algorithms are available to developers in open-source libraries.

As part of DeepMind's ongoing effort to make computer systems more efficient, it has worked with units across Google and Alphabet to apply AI systems similar to Alpha-Dev to optimize network resources, keep data centers cool and share computing resources across servers, according to Murdoch.

In trials, AI reduced the amount of underused hardware in Google's data centers -- meaning servers that weren't being used to their full capacity -- by up to 19%, the company said." [1]

1. Alphabet Unit Targets AI For Optimizing Computing. Lin, Belle. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 08 June 2023: B.4.