Would you be surprised if this was written by a generative text AI such as ChatGPT?  It wasn’t, but now this is entirely possible, unlike even a year ago.  And often when a ‘buzz-targeting’ TV report or article is presented to an audience there is the twist reveal that some or all of it was written by AI, a gimmick that seems far overplayed while the author attempts to prove they could be replaceable by the technology.   

We have seen AI developed to support more systems of monitoring and control for a data center than before, and in the near future (less than a year is not far-fetched) we expect this to grow to have truly automated data centers that are empty of people whenever possible.  And this is essentially scratching the surface from what is being done already in data centers, such as data center operators trusting an AI system to operate and optimize cooling systems for better air distribution and temperatures automatically as loads shift throughout a day, all the way to maximizing economizer air cooling and cooling plant decisions.   

There are more to come, with even better uses of AI to be imagined, tested, implemented, and then trusted with further responsibilities in the data centers.  With each process or system in which AI is introduced, reliable and fast decisions are expected to be the new normal, possible superseding or replacing experience or judgement that may have been inconsistent since it was input by a human.  However, how much will AI replace the person in the data center?   

Technology will be constantly evolving, and not being Luddites most of us are involved with data centers expect the changes to be continually improve into the future.  For all of those things we may be apprehensive about losing out to an AI, there seems to be more applications and use cases where we would gladly have the assistance to spend less time or frustration to diagnose and attempt to fix.   

With AI able to understand how we communicate with the machines around us and throughout a data center, we humans will evolve to communicate in a new manner, likely to speed the processes to deliver results.  We should expect to be able to wield these new tools to find the anomalies, analyze if they matter, and either ignore or add to the ocean of data that is used as the baseline for another AI’s operation.  Programs that can adeptly learn these next phases of how we want to review and control seems like the next logical response, but this is simply the first step in how we begin to truly master this new tool of ours for better outcomes.   

In the meantime for those of us that piece together an occasional blog or online journal with aspirations not much beyond mediocre, AI will be a welcome helper to get results faster based on more novel, original inputs seen across our industry.  At some point AI may be able to create a complete, insightful, and original sounding article, but doesn’t seem to be the case quite yet – although many attempts were made, there is no twist: no generative AI assistance was used in the creation, arrangement, editing, or rearrangement of these words.