IBM is building cognitive AI to impact 'every decision made'
RANCHOS PALOS VERDES, California — The future of artificial intelligence may impact virtually every part of our lives.
“If it’s digital, it’ll be cognitive,” explained IBM CEO Ginny Rometty in a wide-ranging discussion with Recode's Kara Swisher on Wednesday during the annual Code Conference.
"In five years, there’s no doubt in my mind that cognitive AI will impact every decision made," she said.
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Rometty was explaining just how pervasive IBM's brand of cognitive computing-- currently seen in the form of Watson and its cloud-based cognitive computing engine, which is now involved in everything from cancer research to teaching robots how to speak Japanese-- will be in the next five years and beyond.
The company, which has seen its share of change in the last 30 years has invested billions of dollars in cognitive computing. Rometty wouldn't put an exact dollar amount on the Watson spend, but did say that it’s a significant part of their $18 billion analytics business.
The investment may be working, Rometty said that 60 percent to 70 percent of all customers coming into their cloud services taps into Watson.
As IBM transitions from a purely enterprise company, and even from a traditional business-to-business model, Rometty says they, along with others, are increasingly becoming consumer focused. It’s one of the reasons IBM snapped up the Weather Company (Weather.com and its data) last year.
When pressed on whether or not AI is evil and if it will start killing health care jobs, Rometty, who constantly steered the conversation to a discussion of cognitive solutions (of which she says AI is a subset), admitted that there will certainly be some kind of job impact.
"You aren't going to stop it...the trend is gonna keep moving," she said, noting that she thinks repetitive task jobs will take a hit, but new jobs in areas like data will emerge.
As for AI being evil, Rometty said, "What really matters is who teaches these things. Watson is taught. It's about the data you use and who is teaching." She added that, in the case of health care, Watson is being taught by the world's greatest oncologists.
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