Primer: Make sense of cognitive computing

If you've been seeing the word "cognitive" a lot lately, you're not alone. And if you're confused about exactly what it means from an IT and business perspective, you're not alone in that either. To help provide some clarity around the cognitive concept and what it might mean for your organization, I've put together this primer. Cognitive computing uses technology and algorithms to automatically extract concepts and relationships from data, understand their meaning, and learn independently from data patterns and prior experience--extending what people or machines could do on their own, says Paul Roma, chief analytics officer at consulting firm Deloitte Consulting. Deloitte refers to cognitive computing as "more encompassing than the traditional, narrow view of AI [artificial intelligence]," Roma says.