We talk a lot about semantic technology and artificial intelligence, and even cognitive computing. Often those words are used interchangeably, but should they be? What is artificial intelligence, exactly? This interesting information came to us from DATAVERSITY in their article, “A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence.”

Artificial intelligence can be traced back to the classical philosophers of Greece, and their efforts to model human thinking as a system of symbols. Fast forward a couple thousand years; a school of thought called “Connectionism” was developed to study the process of thinking, and Alan Turing wrote a paper suggesting how to test a machine that he believed could carry on a conversation by way of a teleprinter.

Now 60 years later, artificial intelligence is driving change in the way we do many complex tasks. It can process information at much faster speeds than any previous systems. Even with all this, artificial intelligence is not fully realized and research continues.

Semantic technology or semantic web is taking advantage of artificial intelligence technology to accurately interpret natural-language questions and provide better responses to the questions that users are asking.

Cognitive computing is the simulation of human thought processes in a computerized model. The goal of cognitive computing is to create automated IT systems that are capable of solving problems without requiring human assistance.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.