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8:32:00 AM
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oday's PCs and smartphones can do a lot -- from telling you the
weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But
ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the
odor of a great-smelling soup, and they're lost.
That will change in the next five years, says IBM.
Computers at that time will be much more aware of the world around
them, and be able to understand it. The company's annual "5 in 5" list,
in which IBM predicts the five trends in computing that will arrive in
five years' time, reads exactly like a list of the five human senses --
predicting computers with sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
The five senses are really all part of one grand concept: cognitive
computing, which involves machines experiencing the world more like a
human would. For example, a cognizant computer wouldn't see a painting
as merely a set of data points describing color, pigment and brush
stroke; rather, it would truly see the object holistically as a
painting, and be able to know what that means.
Cognitive Advantages
"That's a foundationally different way of thinking of computing," Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation, told Mashable
in an interview. "You have to change how you think about absorbing
data. You can't just take a picture and file the picture. You have to
treat the picture as an entity at a very high level, as opposed to just a
bunch o' bits."
"[Cognitive computing] makes for some very interesting shifts in
capability," he adds. "That's a rather profound sort of driver."
One of the key differences between a cognizant computer and a
traditional one is the idea of training. A cognitive system won't just
continue to give the same wrong or unhelpful answer; if it arrives at
the wrong conclusion, it can change its approach and try again.
"In a cognitive machine, you set it up and run it, but it observes,"
Meyerson says. "And that's very different because it statistically
calculates an end result. However, if that answer is incorrect and you
tell it, it'll actually re-weight those probabilities that led it to get
the wrong answer and eventually get to the right answer."
Cognition Does Not Equal Intelligence
Attributing human senses to machines can't help but conjure images of
androids or self-aware computers capable of independent thought and
action. Meyerson says there's a massive chasm separating cognitive
computing and true artificial intelligence.
"This is really an assistive technology," he explains. "It can't go
off on its own. It's not designed to do that. What it's designed to do,
in fact, is respond to a human in an assistive manner. But by providing a
human-style of input, it's freed us from the task of programming and
moved to the task of training. It simply has -- not more intelligence --
but more bandwidth, and there's a huge difference between the two."
What's your take on cognitive computing? Is IBM on to something with
PCs that can taste, smell, touch, hear and see? How would you use the
technology? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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