Machines will learn like a child: IBM chief Virigina Rometty

Technology is witnessing a shift to intelligent machines capable of reasoning, says IBM chairman and CEO Virginia Rometty.

She said the machines will not replace humans, but will augment them. She said it was a technology that would transform business.

Rometty's comments came during an interview with Gartner analysts at the Symposium ITxpo. She said cognitive systems understood not only data, but unstructured data, which included images, songs, video, and "they reason and they learn."

"When I say reason, it's like you and I, if there is an issue or question, they take in all the information that they know, they stack up a set of hypotheses, they run it against all that data to decide, what do I have the most confidence in, " Rometty said.

The machine "can prove why I do or don't believe something, and if I have high confidence in an answer, I can show you the ranking of what my answers are and then I learn."

"The more you give me – just like a child over time – the more information, the more I learn, so they understand, they reason and they learn," she said.

Meanwhile, IBM yesterday launched the industry's first consulting organisation dedicated to helping clients realise the transformative value of cognitive business.

IBM Cognitive Business Solutions extends the exclusive cognitive leadership of IBM Watson and the company's established market leadership in business analytics.

IBM said the new practice draws on the expertise of more than 2,000 consulting professionals spanning machine learning, advanced analytics, data science and development, supported by industry and change management specialists to accelerate client journeys to cognitive business.

Cognitive represents an entirely new model of computing that includes a range of technology innovations in analytics, natural language processing and machine learning.

Industry analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2018, half of all consumers will interact regularly with services based on cognitive computing.

"Our work with clients across many industries shows that cognitive computing is the path to the next great set of possibilities for business," said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Business Services.

"Clients know they are collecting and analysing more data than ever before, but 80 per cent of all the available data - images, voice, literature, chemical formulas, social expressions - remains out of reach for traditional computing systems. We're scaling expertise to close that gap and help our clients become cognitive banks, retailers, automakers, insurers or healthcare providers."

A survey of more than 5,000 C-suite executives to be released this fall by IBM's Institute for Business Value (IBV) finds that executives from the highest-performing companies place significantly greater priority on cognitive capabilities than peers in market-following enterprises. Industry-specific IBV research shows:

Insurance: Sixty-five per cent of industry CXOs are pursuing some form of business model innovation, but nearly 30 per cent feel the quality, accuracy and completeness of the data in their organization is insufficient. Nearly all said they intend to invest in cognitive capabilities.

Retail: Sixty per cent of retail executives do not believe their company is equipped to deliver the level of individual experiences consumers demand, and 95 percent say they will invest in cognitive in the next five years.

Healthcare: The industry forecasts a 13 million person gap in qualified healthcare workers by 2035, and more than half of healthcare industry CXOs report that current constraints on the ability to use all available information limits their confidence about making strategic business decisions.

Eighty-four per cent of these leaders believe cognitive will be a disruptive force in healthcare and 95 per cent plan to invest in it over the next five years.

Across all industries, executives surveyed by the IBV cite the scarcity of skills and technical expertise as the primary barriers to cognitive adoption -- surpassing concerns about security, privacy or the maturity of the technology. 

IBM consultants are prepared today to bring clients "get started" offerings and readiness assessments that create low-cost entry points to begin the journey to become cognitive enterprises.

"Before long, we will look back and wonder how we made important decisions or discovered new opportunities without systematically learning from all available data," said Stephen Pratt, global leader, IBM Cognitive Business Solutions.

"Over the next decade, this transformation will be very personal for professionals as we embrace learning algorithms to enhance our capacity. For clients, cognitive systems will provide organizations that adopt these powerful tools outperform their peers."