When Kenneth Wayne Jennings, noted for holding the record for the longest winning streak of 74 games on the U.S. syndicated game show, bowed to IBM's Watson as the new "Jeopardy!" champ in 2011, he quoted an episode of "The Simpsons" and wrote "I for one welcome our new computer overlords," on his video screen. That was probably one small step for a computer but a giant leap for computing.
It's ironic to say that Watson's dominance on the game show didn't come out of the blue. The result was a culmination of over a decade of IBM's research. The victory, however, wasn't the end but the beginning of a new era. "It opened up a new chapter in information technology called cognitive computing—based on the idea of a natural interaction between systems and people," says Zachary (Zach) Lemnios, vice president of strategy for IBM Research.
And this evolving relationship between humans and machines was also the key theme of Gartner's recent "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2013." The analyst and consulting firm says it chose to feature the relationship between humans and machines due to the increased hype around smart machines, cognitive computing, and the Internet of Things.
Systems augment humans
It's no secret that organizations today, across industry, are overwhelmed with so much data that they are unable to make time-critical decisions. Not only is the data growing by leaps and bounds it is also coming in multiple shapes and forms. "These increasingly challenging times need organizations to make tighter decisions in tighter timelines with the consequence of each decision going up," Lemnios said.
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