Microsoft and Meta join Google in using AI to help run their data centers | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft and Meta join Google in using AI to help run their data centers

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68 pointsmikece31 comments

I run the compute in multiple large scale datacenters. This is such a silly sensationalist article. There is nothing "AI" about this. It is nothing more than a programmed response to inputs.

Isn’t that what AI is though? Models trained on data determine how to react or respond based on data.

Well yes but it's considered impolite to point out that AI also refers to techniques that have been around for centuries.

Fancy math is indistinguishable from magic.

Linear algebra is fancy?

Reductio ad absurdum

Should I argue over magic, or…?

Also, I don’t believe that’s the proper usage of that term. It would go like this “It cannot be magical, because math is logical.”

Edit for maxdepth reply: The example is looking at any code for a model released in TensorFlow or PyTorch, because it’s 1) quite (exactly) concrete 2) linear algebra with autograd bolted on top. I did a quick search and there are plenty of translators on GitHub that demonstrate that. Here’s an annotated example of neural nets from PyTorch https://pytorch.org/tutorials/beginner/blitz/neural_networks.... What’s incomprehensible about it and would the authors of a ML paper also describe those features as incomprehensible?

The phrase is something like “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Very much science.

Like how a person from 4000bc would think of a voice assistant

If it isn’t fancy please share the ML model for ancient Egyptian to English translator

Isn't the difference that a machine may learn a relation between the inputs and outputs that might escape a human analyst?

Sell the Sizzle.

There is AI, this is even linked in the article for Google's use-case, which is in production already: https://www.deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-dat...

In the 1990's, an AI Corp developer (a woman friend of mine) completely automated the management of a large IBM mainframe using old fashioned AI. The computer worked in complete darkness. She called it "lights out computing".

What's "old fashioned AI"?

a bunch of "if" statements?

Having seen the code for a couple of "intelligent assistant" features: Yeah, basically a bunch of "if" statements. (The IA for the Apple Newton was a ton of special cases. It was clever, but certainly not 'intelligent').

Thus, the technology of AI has improved from a sea of spaghetti code that no human can understand, to a bunch of neural net weights that no human can understand. I love the march of progress. :-)

Maybe more like prolog?

I believe this refers to decision trees that, at the time were referred to as “Expert systems”, which were considered a type of AI.

This (presumably) refers to "Good ol' Fashioned AI" aka Symbolic AI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_artificial_intelligen...) . It's a bit of an over-simplification to say it's a bunch of if statements, but it does involve encoding a bunch of rules/symbols by humans (as opposed to learning from data). It's a largely dead paradigm, though aspects of it are still found in various modern approaches (eg task and motion planning, knowledge bases, etc.) often in combination with learning approaches.

Opening line: "Data centers.....can be hazardous places for the workers...."

In the list of "possible jobs to have", data centers are comparatively sterile.

Loud? Yes. Lonely? Yes. Vast? Yes. Hazardous? That's a stretch.

Having worked in MS's DCs, they are, in fact, hazardous. They absolutely push the limits on heat exposure for humans -- those hot aisles are HOT, and we all carried heat index alarms as a result.

Further, I think its weird you don't think of the sound as a hazard. When its so loud you must wear 30+NRR hearing protection, it sure seems like a hazard to me.

Sounds like as long as you follow basic protocol it isn’t really hazardous.

requiring special safety equipment seems like a pretty good place to draw the line...

As long as you follow basic protocol your outcome won't involve injury. The hazard remains, and is the reason the protocol exists.

Not to mention fire suppression systems and electrical risks.

They absolutely push the limits on heat exposure for humans

That sounds very different from my experience (not with MS DCs) --- where it was loud (though not quite as loud as e.g. an automotive shop) and windy, but the temperature was kept at a controlled 68F (20C) and alerts were raised if it got even slightly hotter than that.

Yes, I suppose there is more risk than sitting at a desk all day, but I think the parent is comparing it to many other jobs like those in the heavy equipment industry, mining, farming, petro, etc.

I'd agree its very different even from my own experience at other data centers. MS really were pushing it in the locations I worked. In early May, the hot aisles were already topping 112F! Given that, the policy in place was, IIRC, 15 minutes of work w/ a mandatory 45m break & fluid consumption.

Certainly there are riskier jobs. Certainly, by and large, data centers are safe places to work. But they are not without hazards and I (obviously) find it irksome when those hazards are dismissed so easily.

Keeping data centers at 68F is a huge waste of power. It makes perfect sense to run them at the limit of what humans can tolerate (but no further).

I had a lonely server at another datacenter of former webhost ThePlanet when things exploded[1] back in 2008. So, while rare, there are risks.

[1] https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/06/01/expl...

Electricians are expected to work on and around live loads in datacenters regularly. It's probably a lot more dangerous than whatever you do.

I've toured power plants, both hydro and coal, which are dangerous places. On a scale of 1-10 with a corporate office being 1 and a power plant being 10, I'd have rated a data center at 1. But now having seen the inside of one, I'd rate it more like 3 or 4. The biggest danger is the high voltage, but there are more mundane dangers like hearing loss, heavy equipment, heat, room-pressure, holes in the floor, etc. It's an industrial facility for sure, and PPE and safety procedures are a BIG DEAL for the workers.

HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

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