Designed for safety and reliability

Google's data centres contain thousands of servers that power popular services including Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. Ensuring that they run reliably and efficiently is mission-critical. We've designed our AI agents and the underlying control infrastructure from the ground up with safety and reliability in mind, and use eight different mechanisms to ensure the system will behave as intended at all times.

One simple method we’ve implemented is to estimate uncertainty. For every potential action—and there are billions—our AI agent calculates its confidence that this is a good action. Actions with low confidence are eliminated from consideration.

Another method is two-layer verification. Optimal actions computed by the AI are vetted against an internal list of safety constraints defined by our data centre operators. Once the instructions are sent from the cloud to the physical data centre, the local control system verifies the instructions against its own set of constraints. This redundant check ensures that the system remains within local constraints and operators retain full control of the operating boundaries.

Most importantly, our data centre operators are always in control and can choose to exit AI control mode at any time. In these scenarios, the control system will transfer seamlessly from AI control to the on-site rules and heuristics that define the automation industry today.

Find out about the other safety mechanisms we’ve developed, below: