Human thinking is beyond imagination.

Can a computer develop such ability to think and reason without human
intervention? This is something programming experts at IBM Watson are trying to achieve. Their goal is to
simulate human thought process in a computerized model. The result is cognitive computing – a combination of
cognitive science and computer science. Cognitive computing models provide a realistic roadmap to achieve
artificial intelligence.
“Cognitive computing represents self-learning systems that utilize machine learning models to mimic the way
brain works.“ Eventually, this technology will facilitate the creation of automated IT models which are capable of
solving problems without human assistance

COGNITION COMES FROM THE HUMAN BRAIN. SO

WHAT’S THE BRAIN OF COGNITIVE SYSTEMS?
Cognitive computing represents the third era of computing. In the first era, (19th century) Charles

Babbage, also known as ‘father of the computer’ introduced the concept of a programmable

computer. Used in the navigational calculation, his computer was designed to tabulate polynomial

functions. The second era (1950) experienced digital programming computers such as ENIAC and

ushered an era of modern computing and programmable systems. And now to cognitive computing

which works on deep learning algorithms and big data analytics to provide insights. Thus the brain

of a cognitive system is the neural network, fundamental concept behind deep learning. The neural

network is a system of hardware and software mimicked after the central nervous system of

humans, to estimate functions that depend on the huge amount of unknown inputs.

WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF A COGNITIVE

COMPUTING SOLUTION?
With the present state of cognitive function computing, basic solution can play an excellent role of

an assistant or virtual advisor. Siri, Google assistant, Cortana, and Alexa are good examples of

personal assistants. Virtual advisor such as Dr. AI by HealthTap is a cognitive solution. It relies on

individual patients’ medical profiles and knowledge gleaned from 105,000 physicians. It compiles a

prioritized list of the symptoms and connects to a doctor if required. Now, experts are working on

implementing cognitive solutions in enterprise systems. Some use cases are fraud detection using

machine learning, predictive analytics solution, predicting oil spills in Oil and Gas production cycle

etc.
The purpose of cognitive computing is the creation of computing frameworks that can solve

complicated problems without constant human intervention. In order to implement cognitive

function computing in commercial and widespread applications, Cognitive Computing

consortium has recommended the following features for the computing systems –

1. Adaptive
This is the first step in making a machine learning based cognitive system. The solutions should

mimic the ability of human brain to learn and adapt from the surroundings. The systems can’t be

programmed for an isolated task. It needs to be dynamic in data gathering, understanding goals, and

requirements.

2. Interactive
Similar to brain the cognitive solution must interact with all elements in the system – processor,

devices, cloud services and user. Cognitive systems should interact bi-directionally. It should

understand human input and provide relevant results using natural language processing and deep

learning. Some skilled intelligent chatbots such as Mitsuku have already achieved this feature.

3. Iterative and stateful

The system should “remember” previous interactions in a process and return information that is

suitable for the specific application at that point in time. It should be able to define the problem by

asking questions or finding an additional source. This feature needs a careful application of the data

quality and validation methodologies in order to ensure that the system is always provided with

enough information and that the data sources it operates on to deliver reliable and up-to-date input.

4. Contextual
They must understand, identify, and extract contextual elements such as meaning, syntax, time,

location, appropriate domain, regulations, user’s profile, process, task, and goal. They may draw on

multiple sources of information, including both structured and unstructured digital information, as

well as sensory inputs (visual, gestural, auditory, or sensor-provided)

WHAT IS THE SCOPE OF COGNITIVE COMPUTING?
While computers have been faster at calculations and processing than humans for decades. But they

have failed miserably to accomplish tasks that humans take for granted, like understanding the

natural language or recognizing unique objects in an image. Thus cognitive technology makes such

new class of problems computable. They can respond to complex situations characterized by

ambiguity and have far-reaching impacts on our private lives, healthcare, business, etc.

According to a study by the IBM Institute for Business Value – “Your Cognitive Future“, the scope

of cognitive computing consists of engagement, decision, and discovery. These 3 capabilities are

related to ways people think and demonstrate their cognitive abilities in everyday life.

1. Engagement
The cognitive systems have vast repositories of structured and unstructured data. These have the

ability to develop deep domain insights and provide expert assistance. The models build by these

systems include the contextual relationships between various entities in a system’s world that enable

it to form hypotheses and arguments. These can reconcile ambiguous and even self-contradictory

data. Thus these systems are able to engage in deep dialogue with humans. The chatbot technology

is a good example of engagement model. Many of the AI chatbots are pre-trained with domain

knowledge for quick adoption in different business-specific applications.

2. Decision
A step ahead of engagement systems, these have decision-making capabilities. These systems

are modeled using reinforcement learning. Decisions made by cognitive systems continually evolve

based on new information, outcomes, and actions. Autonomous decision making depends on the

ability to trace why the particular decision was made and change the confidence score of a systems

response. A popular use case of this model is the use of IBM Watson in healthcare. The system can

collate and analyze data of patient including his history and diagnosis. The solution bases

recommendations on its ability to interpret the meaning and analyze queries in the context of

complex medical data and natural language, including doctors’ notes, patient records, medical

annotations and clinical feedback. As the solution learns, it becomes increasingly more accurate.
Providing decision support capabilities and reducing paperwork allows clinicians to spend more

time with patients.

3. Discovery
Discovery is the most advanced scope of cognitive computing. Discovery involves finding insights

and understanding vast amount of information and developing skills. These models are built on

deep learning and unsupervised machine learning. With ever-increasing volumes of data, there is a

clear need for systems that help exploit information more effectively than humans could on their

own. While still in the early stages, some discovery capabilities have already emerged, and the

value propositions for future applications are compelling. Cognitive Information Management

(CIM) shell at Louisiana State University (LSU) is one of the cognitive solutions. The distributed

intelligent agents in the model collect streaming data, like text and video, to create an interactive

sensing, inspection, and visualization system that provides real-time monitoring and analysis. The

CIM Shell not only sends an alert but reconfigures on the fly in order to isolate a critical event and

fix the failure.

COGNITIVE COMPUTING LANDSCAPE

Present cognitive computing landscape is dominated by larger players – IBM, Microsoft, and

Google. IBM being the pioneer of this technology has invested $26 billion dollars in big data and

analytics and now spends close to one-third of its R&D budget in developing cognitive computing

technology. Many other companies and organizations are developing products and services that are

as good, if not better than Watson. IBM and Google have acquired some of the rivals and the market

is moving towards consolidation. Let’s take a look at the prominent players in this market –

1. IBM Watson
Originally Watson is an IBM supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and

sophisticated analytical software for optimal performance as a “question answering” machine

famously featured in show ‘Jeopardy’. Now it uses a set of transformational technologies such as

natural language processing, image recognition, text analytics and virtual agents. IBM Watson

leverages deep content analysis and evidence-based reasoning. Combined with massive
probabilistic processing techniques, Watson can improve decision making, reduce cost and optimize

outcomes.

2. Microsoft Cognitive Services

Microsoft cognitive services previously known as Project Oxford are a set of APIs, SDKs and

cognitive services which the developers can use to make their applications more intelligent. With

Cognitive Services, developers can easily add intelligent features – such as emotion and sentiment

detection, vision and speech recognition, knowledge, search and language understanding – into their

applications. Infact, the first version of our chatbot – ‘Specter’ (lower right corner) was built using

the Microsoft Bot Framework to improve the efficiency of our marketing team. We then

subsequently built it using our own chatbot development platform ‘WotNot‘.

3. Google DeepMind
DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 and considered to be a leading player in AI research.

The team consists of many renowned experts in the field of deep neural networks, reinforcement

learning, and systems neuroscience-inspired models. DeepMind became popular with AlphaGo, a

narrow AI to play Go, a Chinese strategy board game for two players. AlphaGo became the first AI

program to beat a professional human player in October 2015, on a full-sized board.

4. CognitiveScale
CognitiveScale founded by former members of IBM Watson team provides cognitive cloud

software for enterprises. Cognitive Scale’s augmented intelligence platform delivers insights-as-a-

service and accelerates the creation of cognitive applications in healthcare, retail, travel, and

financial services. They help businesses make sense from ‘dark data’ – messy, disparate, first and

third party data and drive actionable insights and continuous learning.

5. SparkCognition
SparkCognition is an Austin-based startup formed in 2014. SparkCognition develops AI-Powered

cyber-physical software for the safety, security, and reliability of IT, OT, and the IIoT. The

technology is more inclined towards manufacturing. It is capable of harnessing real-time sensor data
and learning from it continuously, allowing for more accurate risk mitigation and prevention

policies to intervene and avert disasters.

Watson and DeepMind’s success has inspired other companies to develop cognitive platforms using

open source tools. Other leading technology companies like Qualcomm and Intel are taking

cautious steps to include cognitive solutions for specialized industries. Uber has established a

research arm dedicated to AI and machine learning and acquired Geometric Intelligence and Otto.

Otto is an autonomous truck and transportation startup and Geometric Intelligence is focused on

generating insights from fewer data using machine learning. Gamalon has developed an AI

technique using Bayesian Program Synthesis. It requires only a few pieces to train the system to

achieve same levels of accuracy as neural networks.

Healthcare is the most popular sector to adopt cognitive solutions. Startups such

as Lumiata and Enlitic have developed small and powerful analytic solutions that assist healthcare

providers in diagnosis and prediction of disease conditions.Other companies in this market are

Cisco cognitive threat analytics, CustomerMatrix, Digital Reasoning and Narrative Science.

LIMITATIONS OF COGNITIVE COMPUTING

Limited analysis of risk

The cognitive systems fail at analyzing the risk which is missing in the unstructured data. This

includes socio-economic factors, culture, political environments, and people. For example, a

predictive model discovers a location for oil exploration. But if the country is undergoing a change

in government, the cognitive model should take this factor into consideration. Thus human

intervention is necessary for complete risk analysis and final decision making.

Meticulous training process

Initially, the cognitive systems need training data to completely understand the process and

improve. The laborious process of training cognitive systems is most likely the reason for its slow

adoption. WellPoint’s financial management is facing a similar situation with IBM Watson. The

process of training Watson for use by the insurer includes reviewing the text on every medical
policy with IBM engineers. The nursing staff keeps feeding cases until the system completely

understands a particular medical condition. Moreover, the complex and expensive process of using

cognitive systems makes it even worse.

More intelligence augmentation rather than artificial intelligence

The scope of present cognitive technology is limited to engagement and decision. Cognitive

computing systems are most effective as assistants which are more like intelligence augmentation

instead of artificial intelligence. It supplements human thinking and analysis but depends on

humans to take the critical decisions. Smart assistants and chatbots are good examples. Rather than

enterprise-wide adoption, such specialized projects are an effective way for businesses to start using

cognitive systems.

Cognitive computing is definitely the next step in computing started by automation. It sets a

benchmark for computing systems to reach the level of the human brain. But it has some limitations

which make AI difficult to apply in situations with a high level of uncertainty, rapid change or

creative demands. The complexity of problem grows with the number of data sources. It is

challenging to aggregate, integrate and analyze such unstructured data. A complex cognitive

solution should have many technologies that coexist to give deep domain insights.

Thus, besides AI, ML and NLP, technologies such as NoSQL, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, Kafka, Spark

etc should form a part of the cognitive system. This complete solution would be capable of handling

dynamic real-time data and static historical data. The enterprises looking to adopt cognitive

solutions should start with a specific business segment. These segments should have strong business

rules to guide the algorithms, and large volumes of data to train the machines.