IBM's Watson Answers the Question, "What's the Difference Between Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing?"

Prime time television viewers have undoubtedly noticed the slew of recent commercials featuring IBM's Watson computing platform in conversation with celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Carrie Fisher, Serena Williams, and Stephen King. These ads showcase continuing advances in Watson's speech capabilities and intelligence applied to various disciplines, which were initially exhibited in Watson's championship performance on the Jeopardy! The public and much of the press tend to think of such computing capabilities as "artificial intelligence" (a.k.a. AI), although that term can bring with it connotations of technology run amuck, à la HAL 9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator's Skynet, and many other popular depictions. Outside the realm of fiction, technology business leader Elon Musk has tweeted that AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes," and physicist Stephen Hawking warned "development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."