IBM CEO: Cognitive era is here

The'cognitive era' has arrived says IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, who was in Sydney yesterday to demonstrate Big Blue's cognitive computing technology Watson. The era marked the convergence of'man and machine' according to Rometty, who predicted that within five years every business decision would be aided by cognitive systems. IBM Watson is a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data. Ten years in the making, it's now being used by a number of Australian businesses. KPMG Australia yesterday announced it would be introducing Watson to its audit and assurance services to "accelerate teams' ability to analyse and act" on the "immense volumes of structured and unstructured data related to a company's financial and non-financial information".