Cognitive computing refers to the concept of self-learning systems. These systems include AI, NLP, pattern recognition, and machine learning, among other technologies. The two cognitive computing giants in the market at present are IBM Watson and Microsoft. These companies give us the efficiency to develop modern, intelligent, and agile apps with the help of their cognitive services. The services consist of the best collection of technology that helps to develop an interactive and automated app model. Furthermore, these technology systems help to infuse the application with intelligence and power to automate important tasks.
These days intelligent machines replicate human brain capacities to help elucidate society’s most afflicting problems. Cognitive computing has certainly arrived, and its capability to revamp industries all over the world is enormous. To analyze future conveniences and pin down how cognitive computing is at present being utilized in sundry industries, the IBM Institute for Business Value executed a follow-up inquiry to its pioneer Your cognitive future probe study.
According to the survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the insights were given from more than 800 industrialists from all over the globe in a variety of businesses including finance, healthcare, retail, banking, insurance, government, life sciences, telecommunications, oil, and gas, and consumer products; interviews with subject experts across IBM; and research.
APIs of cognitive services gathered into different categories
Vision
The vision APIs enable the integration of vision detection characters into applications useful in detecting images, faces, labels, landmarks, optical character recognition, and tagging of non-pertinent content. With the help of vision API, deriving significant value, finding new insights, and taking significant action becomes easier.
Speech
The speech APIs help in identifying the person who speaks, converting speech to text and text to speech by realizing the intent, and recognition of fine-tuning speech for anyone and anywhere. The speech API helps to train your app over different language models.
Language
The language APIs segregate natural language text, semantic concept extractions, conversations, entity extraction, document conversion, language translation, passage retrieval and ranking, relationship extraction, and more.
Data Insights
The Data API helps in writing, reading, and modifying information on the web such as blog posts and news. The content has natural language and processing facilitates that are highly targeted on search and trend analysis.
All these APIs perform different jobs and can solve a number of business challenges. When the entrepreneur combines these cognitive services to overlay them with tailored data analytics capabilities, they get predictive insights, engines to carry the decisions that are taken as per the insights and complex discoveries. Cognitive technologies give manufacturers of household goods new ideas to create value for customers such as Isabella. These technology insights derived from artificial intelligence (AI) enhances consumer experience across the demand life cycle, from post-purchase interaction, and product usage.
These days a number of companies are hiring cognitive technologies across a massive range of product categories, starting from durables to staples. These technologies are embedded in consumer electronics and appliances, for example, to enable them to see, think, and hear. While cognitive technologies create compelling new opportunities for entrepreneurs, their use should be restricted. Businessmen can make wise choices about how and where to apply cognitive technologies by creating value for consumers.
Cognitive technologies currently in use include
Computer vision
The ability of computers to identify scenes, objects, and activities in naturalistic visual environments.
Speech recognition
The ability of a computer to accurately and automatically transcribe human speech
Optimization
The ability of a computer to automate tough decisions and trade-offs for limited resources
Planning and scheduling
The ability of a computer to automatically devise a series of actions to meet goals
Rules-based systems
The ability of a computer to use databases of knowledge and rules and automate the cycle of making inferences about information.
Cognitive technology is also used in the field of robotics to create robots that can work, interact, assist and entertain people. Such robots are able to perform different tasks in environments, with the help of integrating cognitive technologies such as computer vision and automated planning with high-performance sensors, hardware, and actuators.
Cognitive Technologies in Consumer Products
Among risky global economic conditions, most of the consumer product industries in the United States are struggling to achieve growth. Concurrently, they contend with increasing value-conscious yet tech-savvy and demanding customers. With customers using digital devices to shop – these days consumers read reviews and compare the product with other brand’s products on their smartphones, it has become essential for companies to use and invest in a myriad of emerging and technologies to better connect, engage, and understand with consumers. In the present era of technology, digital interactions have influenced more than one-third of retail in-store sales. This is due mainly due to two reasons: consumer readiness for using such digital technology and producers' willingness to invest in cognitive technologies.