At CES 2016 held in January, Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, proclaimed era of cognitive business, emphasizing that “digital technology alone is no longer able to create differentiated value. Cognitive computing is the only solution capable of creating the differentiated value.”

‘IBM Connect 2016 – A New Era of Thinking’ event held on May 12 showed just how IBM’s Cognitive Business is implementing its Watson, cloud, analytics, security, IT infrastructure, etc. across the field. With approximately 1,500 industry officials attending the event to show hot interest in the theme, Jeffrey Rhoda, General Manager of IBM Korea, said that “80% of all data generated in the world are atypical data, which can’t be properly utilized for now. In this era of cognitive business, however, we are going to enable computers to acquire and learn way more data.”

The cognitive computing mentioned by IBM means implementing cognition, which is a kind of thinking ability, in all intelligent products including digital applications, products, processes, systems, etc. IBM, determining that Watson’s cognitive ability is the future of IoT, announced that it will invest USD 3 billion in combining cognitive computers and IoT.

AI is a present progressive technology already in workplace

Yeon-Joo Kim, Managing Director of IBM Korea, stated that “AI is no longer a technology of future but of today. And Watson is going to learn to understand Korean by year end.”

 
▲ IBM’s Watson powers Pepper, the intelligent robot from Japanese company Softbank

Jason Leonard, who is the Business Unit Executive for IBM Watson, Asia-Pacific, started his keynote address by having a dialogue with Nao-mi, IBM’s robot to which Watson cognitive computing technology is applied. He emphasized that “Watson is continuously learning to respond to natural language. However, rather than replace humans in their work, Watson’s role will be to become assistants to make it easier for them to make decisions.” 

Jeffrey Rhoda explained that “an employee with only two years’ experience will be able to perform like one with 10 years’ experience,” because Watson will keep acquiring and learning while working for him/her. Of course, for that to become a reality, development of a rich variety of Watson applications will be a prerequisite.