Building Your Cognitive Technology

Tom Davenport on building cognitive technologies.

" ... Most organizations that are exploring cognitive technologies—smart machines that automate aspects of decision-making processes—are just putting a toe in the water. They’re doing a pilot or “proof of concept” to explore the technology and how it fits into their business. Rajeev Ronanki, a Deloitte consultant who works with IBM Corp.’s Watson and other cognitive technologies, told me recently that virtually all of his clients want to start with a small step:

   'They want to make sure that it’s not science fiction before they really commit to the technology at    full scale. So the first project is typically a pilot that takes four to six months to develop' .

The good news is that this technology is not science fiction, but rather something from which organizations can benefit today. Chances are good, then, that organizations will want to create architectures for cognitive technologies that support more than a single application. In fact, I believe that it won’t be long before sophisticated organizations set out to build “cognitive architectures” that interface with, but are distinct from, their regular IT architectures.  ... "  

Later on he mentions a rule engine (JRules) which is part of IBM owned ILog, and how this should be part of Watson services.  A good point, connectivity is not quite what it could be yet.   Making it more difficult and time consuming to build prototypes, which are essential for this kind of new tech.   Later there is a good list of requirements for easy to use, test and integrate technologies.   Would read that carefully before proceeding.