IBM Reboots Its Research to Focus on Cognitive Computing

As cheap cloud computing services erode IBM's traditional hardware business with alarming speed, the company finds itself facing an uncertain future. If only there were some clever machine it could turn to for advice. Appropriately enough that's what a large part of IBM's research division is trying to create, by building on the research effort that led to Watson, the computer that won in the game show Jeopardy! in 2011. The hope is that this effort will lead to software and hardware that can answer complex questions by looking through vast amounts of information containing subtle and disparate clues. "We're betting billons of dollars, and a third of this division now is working on it," John Kelly, director of IBM Research, said of cognitive computing, a term the company uses to refer to artificial intelligence techniques related to Watson.