Mr Watson – come here – I want to see you .” Famously spoken by inventor Alexander Graham Bell , these were the very first words ever said on the telephone . Since then , speech has become the natural mode of conversation across the globe . Even as technological advancements have seen the rise of written messages via text , email and social media , humans still gravitate towards natural conversation . IBM ’ s Watson didn ’ t gain its name from the invention of the telephone , but rather from IBM ’ s first CEO , industrialist Thomas J Watson . Founded in 1911 , the tech giant is world-renowned for its continual innovation . Yet despite the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the Internet of Things ( IoT ), IBM hasn ’ t lost sight of what ’ s important – the human connection .

IBM ’ s Watson , has made it possible for computer systems to understand natural language . Driven by analytics , artificial intelligence ( AI ), and machine learning , the cognitive computing system is built to aid decision making , reduce costs and optimise outcomes by simulating human thought processes . With its sophisticated reasoning capabilities , Watson seeks to augment human abilities by ingesting immense amounts of data , learning at scale , understanding the context of this data , and answering questions in real-time – all whilst using natural language . From traditional programming models to the new cognitive computing era , IBM has seen a dramatic change in the way systems and humans interact . However , Gabi Zodik , Director and CTO of Development for Watson IoT Consumer Business , says that this

186 January 2018