Cognition is the brain’s ability to process information from perception, experience, and other subjective characteristics. It consists of processes such as learning, reasoning, attention, memory, problem solving, decision making, feelings.
The term cognitive computing is closely associated with IBM’s cognitive system, Watson. The Watson supercomputer is an artificial intelligence computer system that is capable of answering questions formulated in natural language, thanks to a locally stored database. To test his real abilities, he participated in the American television contest Jeopardy, defeating his two human opponents.
But Watson is not alone, but all the technological giants have also bet on solutions based on cognitive computing. Another very skillful machine in games is Libratus , created by the University of Alberta (Canada) and Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). Libratus is an artificial intelligence computer program designed for playing poker, and it has beaten a group of poker professionals in multiple games. Nor could we forget Google’s AlphaGo , a computer program developed by Google DeepMind to play the board game Go, a board game much more complex than chess.
Another solution based on cognitive computing is intelligent personal assistance found in new versions of the operating system. In this area, all the leading technology companies have developed their own algorithm. Microsoft has introduced Cortana , a tool that can set reminders, recognize natural speech, and answer questions using information from the search engine Bing, Yelp, and Foursquare. Apple has also unveiled its own solution for iOS users.
Siri is a smart personal assistant that can work through multiple iPhone and iPad apps as needed to accomplish your tasks. Google has developed Google Now , for Android and also for iOS. The true power of Google Now is that it also relies on user preferences and search history to anticipate needs and provide personalized information based on those needs before the user requests it. Another smart personal assistant in this case not connected to a standard device operating system is Alexa , developed by Amazon. Alexa responds to voice control by returning information about products, music, news, weather, sports, and more. Finally, Samsung in its latest mobile phone includes Bixby , software will be able to combine conversational language and integration with third-party applications to carry out tasks, dictate messages or answer queries.
Spain also plays an important role in the development of solutions based on cognitive computing , one of the Spanish centers of great prestige worldwide in this branch is the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), in which they work more than five hundred researchers, and they have infrastructures such as the MareNostrum supercomputer.
Robert Brunet is a researcher in chemical engineering at the Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona)
