Artificial intelligence—Next "bold play"

Computers cannot think, though increasingly, they can do things only humans were able to do. A product of the field of research known as artificial intelligence, cognitive technologies have been evolving over decades.

It is now possible to automate tasks that require human perceptual skills, such as recognizing handwriting or identifying faces, and those that require cognitive skills, such as planning, reasoning from partial or uncertain information, and learning. Technologies able to perform tasks such as these, traditionally assumed to require human intelligence, are known as cognitive technologies.

Businesses are taking a new look at them because some have improved dramatically in recent years, with impressive gains in computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, and robotics, among other areas.

How are cognitive technologies being used in organizations today? Organizations across industries of the economy are already using cognitive technologies in diverse business functions.

Application areas, which assist business leaders in making better business decisions, can broadly be classified into:

• Cognitive Insights
• Cognitive Automation
• Cognitive Engagement
• Cognitive Sensing

We found that applications of cognitive technologies fall into three main categories: product, process, or insight. Product applications embed the technology in a product or service to provide end-customer benefits. Process applications embed the technology in an organization’s workflow to automate or improve operations. And insight applications use cognitive technologies—specifically advanced analytical capabilities such as machine learning—to uncover insights that can inform operational and strategic decisions across an organization.