What is cognitive AI?

Cognitive AI deals with artificially intelligent systems that mimic human behavior. It uses multiple advanced learning algorithms to learn from its surroundings with time and improves itself by learning from its experience.

For example, when a child is born, they don't know anything about the world. However, over time, they learn and pick up human behavior from their surroundings. If they perform an undesirable action, they are punished. Likewise, if they do something good, they are rewarded. Cognitive AI similarly aims for systems to learn from their environment.

Aims of cognitive AI

• Cognitive AI aims to achieve human-like interaction with its users and its surroundings so it can interact in a consistent manner.

• Cognitive AI implements human-like reasoning in certain situations and comes up with responses similar to the ones exhibited by humans.

How cognitive AI works

Cognitive AI uses a mixture of different types of machine learning algorithms to train itself and to improve over time using self-learning technologies. When faced with new and frequently changing problems, it can identify similar patterns from already experienced events.

Cognitive AI adheres to the following steps:

1. It collects data from multiple sources which can be in both structured and unstructured form.

2. It then applies data preprocessing steps to clean and structure the data so it can be used effectively in the learning stages.

3. After all the data is ready, it uses multiple machine learning techniques such as computer vision, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and speech recognition to make sense of the data and finds similar or new patterns.

4. Once the AI is trained, it can then use all the information which it learned to find solutions to various problems.

5. It also improves itself over time upon user feedback by using various reinforcement learning techniques. As cognitive AI models are adaptive they refine themselves with the feedback they receive to enhance their reasoning capabilities.

Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence

The terms Artificial Intelligence and cognitive computing may look like they refer to the same thing. However, there are some differences between the two.

1. AI deals with finding solutions to complex problems by analyzing large data sets to reveal any hidden information and uses it to find relevant patterns. Cognitive computing first understands the statement as to how any normal human brain would comprehend it and then provides the user with relevant information.

2. The aim of cognitive computing is to assist human beings to make a decision by providing additional information. AI is concerned with automating processes and providing accurate answers to complex problems.

Key attributes of cognitive AI

1. Adaptive: The system learns and adapts to new information as the data and the environment change. It is hence able to improve the more it interacts.

2. Contextual: The system understands the context of the data using techniques like sentiment analysis and natural language processing.

3. Interactive: The system interacts with other humans or cognitive systems in the vicinity.

4. Iterative: If the user provides an incomplete problem, it recursively asks the user for more details until it has all the information it requires.

Cognitive AI in the real world

• Healthcare industry: It can read a patient's file that contains all past history and medical records to suggest a diagnosis for any problems they could be facing.

• Education industry: It helps teachers or students understand complex topics easily by breaking them down and further explaining them. It can also act as a tool for providing better suggestions for already written solutions.

• Cyber security: It analyzes various types of threats by scanning different traffic. It also looks for any vulnerabilities that a system may have.

• Business decisions: It studies the customers of a business and what type of products they buy. This helps businesses make better decisions for their future.