Machine intelligence: Technology mimics human cognition to create value

Data's emergence as a critical business asset has been a persistent theme in every Tech Trends report, from the foundational capabilities needed to manage its exploding volumes and complexity to the increasingly sophisticated analytics tools techniques available to unearth business insights from data troves. By harnessing analytics to illuminate patterns, insights, and opportunities hidden within ever-growing data stores, companies have been able to develop new approaches to customer engagement; to amplify employee skills and intelligence; to cultivate new products, services, and offerings; and to explore new business models. Today, more and more CIOs are aggressively laying the foundations needed for their organizations to become more insight-driven. Artificial intelligence (AI)--technologies capable of performing tasks normally requiring human intelligence--is becoming an important component of these analytics efforts. Yet AI is only one part of a larger, more compelling set of developments in the realm of cognitive computing. The bigger story is machine intelligence (MI), an umbrella term for a collection of advances representing a new cognitive era. We are talking here about a number of cognitive tools that have evolved rapidly in recent years: machine learning, deep learning, advanced cognitive analytics, robotics process automation, and bots, to name a few.