Cognitive Systems and the Emergence of a New Era of Computing

Dario Gil
Director, Industry Solutions, IBM Research
IBM Research

Cognitive systems are an emerging model of computing designed with people as an integral and central element of the process, and which are explicitly aimed to enhance human cognition.
In this new era, cognitive systems will do much more than execute pre-determined programs and calculate difficult equations at great speeds. These systems will dramatically alter how we think, learn and interact with computers; how business leaders use predictive data to make business decisions, how policy makers devise new approaches to governing and how individuals use technology in their everyday lives. These systems will learn from both structured and unstructured data, find important correlations, create hypotheses for these correlations, and suggest and measure actions to enable better outcomes for users. Systems with these capabilities will transform our view of computers from ‘‘calculators’’ to ‘‘machines that learn.’’ This shift will radically alter our expectations of what computing ought to do for us as humans and will equip us to successfully navigate the increasing complexity of our globally interconnected world.