The Semantic Folding Theory (SFT) is the attempt to develop an alternative computational theory for the processing of language data. While nearly all current methods of processing natural language use word statistics, Semantic Folding uses a neuroscience based mechanism of distributional semantics. After capturing a given semantic universe of a reference set of documents by means of a fully unsupervised mechanism, the resulting semantic space is folded into each and every word-representation vector. These vectors are large, sparsely filled binary vectors. Every feature bit in this vector not only corresponds but also equals a specific semantic feature of the folded-in semantic space and is therefore semantically grounded.

Paul is joined by Francisco Webber for a conversation around high-efficiency artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language understanding (NLU). Francisco Webber is co-founder and CEO of Cortical.io, He has explored search engine technologies and documentation systems in various contexts but became frustrated with the limitations to current methods. Follow him on LinkedIn and be sure to follow Paul and Rocket Software.

Taylor Peer is currently working as the Director of Data Science at Cortical.io, a Viennese AI company developing business solutions for information extraction and processing using Natural Language Understanding. On the show we are talking about Semantic Folding, the core technology developed by Cortical.io

Email management is a bigger challenge every year. In 2019, business email accounted for more than 128.8 billion emails sent and received per day, according to the Radicati Group. Adding to the challenge, many emails never make it to the right business account because they are sent to bulk accounts like info@company.com Regardless of where the emails land, the average full-time worker spends 28% of the workday reading and answering email, according to a McKinsey analysis. That amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent each day. Corporate email continues to rule in the business world, but the deluge is impairing productivity, not to mention becoming unmanageable from a corporate perspective.

Francisco is the Founder and CEO of cortical.io, Francisco's medical background in genetics combined with over two decade's of experience in Information Technology, inspired him to create a groundbreaking technology, called Semantic Folding, which is based on the latest findings on the way the human neocortex processes information. Francisco founded Matrixware Information Services, a company that developed the first standardized database of patents. Francisco also initiated the Information Retrieval Facility, a non-profit research institute, with the goal to bridge the gap between science and industry in the information retrieval domain. Let me introduce you to Francisco Webber, Founder and CEO of cortical.io.

Francisco Webber offers a critical overview of current approaches to artificial intelligence using "brute force" (aka big data machine learning) as well as a practical demonstration of semantic folding, an alternative approach based on computational principles found in the human neocortex. Semantic folding is not just a research prototype--it's a production-grade enterprise technology. Francisco explores the theoretical underpinnings of semantic folding, which solves the representational problem and the semantic grounding problem--both well known by AI-researchers since the 1980s, and offers an introduction to the Retina Engine, an Apache Spark library for semantic processing of text. Along the way, Francisco demonstrates functional prototypes of semantic classification, semantic filtering, and semantic searching and explains the applications of semantic folding for the finance, media, automotive, legal, medical, and safety and security industries.

Francisco is the Founder and CEO of cortical.io, Francisco's medical background in genetics combined with over two decade's of experience in Information Technology, inspired him to create a groundbreaking technology, called Semantic Folding, which is based on the latest findings on the way the human neocortex processes information. Francisco founded Matrixware Information Services, a company that developed the first standardized database of patents. Francisco also initiated the Information Retrieval Facility, a non-profit research institute, with the goal to bridge the gap between science and industry in the information retrieval domain. Let me introduce you to Francisco Webber, Founder and CEO of cortical.io.

A recent academic study conducted by researchers from Leiden, Ben-Gurion and Toulouse Universities examined the performance of Cortical.io's Compared to the commonly used word-list method, Semantic Folding proved to have greater predictive power. Its other advantages were speed and ease of use. "Like the human brain, our Semantic Folding engine learns a language and understands the meaning of text by making analogies. Like the brain, it is both efficient and accurate. We are thrilled to see these compelling results confirmed by an independent academic study", comments Francisco Webber, inventor and co-founder of Cortical.io.