Be that person who defines the future, not a victim of it

Be that person who defines the future,

not a victim of it

IBM Innovation speaker to present at CeBIT 2016

Dr. Bernard S. Meyerson, Chief Innovation Officer at IBM, will be a keynote speaker at Australasia’s largest business technology tradeshow CeBIT Australia, relaying his expertise and insights on cognitive computing and artificial intelligence.

His session The Cognitive Era: AI Comes of Age, will focus on the ways in which advances in technology, specifically cognitive computing, open a new era of man/machine collaboration which could very well represent the beginning of a fourth industrial revolution.

Dr. Meyerson explains there is a huge amount of interest in artificial intelligence, and justly so, as the potential from man/machine collaboration is impressive. However, he believes the term artificial intelligence misses the point entirely.

“I tend to think of AI as ‘accessible intelligence’, rather than artificial. Thanks to movies like Terminator and Transformers, the popular misperception of artificial intelligence is something that wakes up in the morning and, literally, terminates you by noon.”

“The reality will be enormously different – and I intend to share a much more realistic vision of how you’ll experience this technology.  We’re going to see dramatic advances in what a human being is capable of doing when working in partnership with these technologies. It’s like having an assistant sitting alongside you who has perfect recall, no biases, and the ability to consume enormous amounts of data from a wide variety of sources in a matter of seconds. That allows you to work in collaboration with AI to come up with insights and results you wouldn’t be capable of creating yourself.

“At a very high level, that is what my session at CeBIT will be about: broaching what challenges are in creating such advancements, why this technology is so important, plus examples of man/machine collaboration. You’ll get a clear understanding of how what’s happening differs greatly from the SciFi alternative – which just is not reality,” said Dr Meyerson.

Dr Meyerson continued by explaining that we are already seeing the emergence of the Cognitive Era in the business landscape.

“For example, sentiment analysis is a form of cognitive computing that allows you to ingest the entire Twitterverse to analyse every comment being made about your brand, its offerings and your competitors. The technology determines whether your messages are being well received by your target audience – essentially allowing you to react to – and in many cases, anticipate — problems and opportunities in real-time based on hard data versus a hunch.”

“With the incorporation of cognitive computing into everyday business life, the velocity of business will increase dramatically. These technological advancements are becoming more readily available, so much so that they are transforming entire industries. Those who embrace it and understand the potential are the ones who will define the future, and not be a victim of it.”