Thinking On Paper

Data center outages: why two thirds are human error and how Entangl's deterministic AI fixes it


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Two thirds of data centre outages are caused by someone pressing the wrong switch. Not a cyberattack. Not a hardware failure. A person, in a building full of thousands of switches, turning off the wrong one.


Shapol and his co-founder built four reusable rocket missions before they turned to data centres. Their conclusion: the most critical infrastructure on the planet is still being operated with Word documents, printed manuals, and procedures written by hand weeks in advance - documents that are rarely updated as hardware changes, and that rely entirely on humans not making mistakes.


Entangl ingests every design document, every circuit, every asset, and produces step-by-step operating instructions deterministically. Same input, same output, every time — like an aircraft autopilot. No variability. No hallucinations. Because in infrastructure AI, hallucination is not a feature. It is a catastrophic failure.


This episode covers:

  • Why 18-month generator lead times force data centres to operate without backup power, and what that means for the next outage
  • How Entangl's system detects every asset in a data centre, generates every possible operating procedure automatically, and updates them in real time as hardware changes
  • Deterministic vs generative AI: why ChatGPT-style creativity is exactly what you do not want in a system that controls whether hospitals stay online
  • The Dunning-Kruger problem in data centre operations: why experienced engineers are often the most dangerous ones
  • VR training: how engineers learn to work on live systems without touching them
  • The Challenger framing: do humans always have the final say, and should they?
  • Space-based data centres: Shapol is in the same YC cohort as Star Cloud and refers them directly. His view on when heavy industry moves off Earth

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TIMESTAMPS


(00:00) Trailer

(02:17) From rocket launches to data center automation

(06:00) How Entangl integrates with building monitoring systems

(08:34) Data Center Design constraints: How AI fixes it

(15:37) AI, Dunning Kruger And Hallucinations

(21:42) Will humans always have the final say in data centers?

(24:53) Space-based data centers and solar power

(25:04) Kevin Kelly's question: What should humans become?


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Thinking On PaperBy Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson