Cognitive Computing Perception, Learning, Reasoning | 1st | week 2 |.
AI is at the forefront of a new era of computing, Cognitive Computing. It's a radically new kind of computing, very different from the programmable systems that preceded it, as different as those systems were from the tabulating machines of a century ago. Conventional computing solutions, based on the mathematical principles that emanate from the 1940's, are programmed based on rules and logic intended to derive mathematically precise answers, often following a rigid decision tree approach. But with today's wealth of big data and the need for more complex evidence-based decisions, such a rigid approach often breaks or fails to keep up with available information. Cognitive Computing enables people to create a profoundly new kind of value, finding answers and insights locked away in volumes of data. Whether we consider a doctor diagnosing a patient, a wealth manager advising a client on their retirement portfolio, or even a chef creating a new recipe, they need new approaches to put into context the volume of information they deal with on a daily basis in order to derive value from it. These processes serve to enhance human expertise. Cognitive Computing mirrors some of the key cognitive elements of human expertise, systems that reason about problems like a human does. When we as humans seek to understand something and to make a decision, we go through four key steps. First, we observe visible phenomena and bodies of evidence. Second, we draw on what we know to interpret what we are seeing to generate hypotheses about what it means. Third, we evaluate which hypotheses are right or wrong.