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IBM PREDICTS FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES

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This morning, IBM Research released a report predicting five major innovations that will affect our lives profoundly by 2022. Among its predictions are:

  • Artificial Intelligence and Mental Health:   Computers will analyze patient speech and written words. Anomalies will reveal developmental disorders, mental illness, or neurological disease. Medical personnel will be able to track these conditions in real time, without having to wait for the patient to visit the clinic for a checkup. A I tracking through wearable devices will complement drug therapy and clinical treatment.
  • Superhero Vision:    Our eyes detect less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum. With hyperimaging tools and A I, though, we could ‘see’ far more than is revealed in visible light. With portable devices, we could sense hidden opportunities or threats. Our cars could ‘see’ through rain or fog, detect invisible hazards such as black ice, and tell us the distance and size of objects in our paths.
  • Macroscopes:   With machine learning and software, we could organize information about the physical world. Billions of devices within our range of vision will gather massive and complex data. This is what IBM calls the ‘macroscope’. It will enable us to read and instantly analyze the useful data all around us, while filtering out irrelevancies.
  • Medical Lab on a Chip:   By analyzing body fluids, devices you carry or wear will tell you if you need to see a physician. A single chip will handle all of the detection and analysis that currently requires a full biochemistry labs.
  • Smart Sensors that Detect Pollution:    With much more sensitive sensors, we could easily detect storage and pipeline leaks. Even the most minute and invisible leaks could be caught in real time. Sensors will report problems at the speed of light.

In previous reports, IBM predicted classrooms that learn you, touching through your phone, and computers with a sense of smell.

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MEMORY BY GOOGLE

Have you ever forgotten a business appointment? Have you ever forgotten your spouse’s birthday? Have you ever forgotten your most important point while briefing your boss about a critical project?

Memory often fails us when we need it most. Within a few years, though, you might not need it. Machines will remember what you need to know.

Last month, IBM patented an algorithm it calls an “automatic Google for the mind”. It could track your behavior and speech, analyze your intentions, and, discerning when you seem to have lost your way, offer suggestions to prod your memory. Dr. James Kozlowski, a computational neuroscientist for IBM Research, is the lead researcher for the automated memory project. Kozlowski says he helped develop his company’s new ‘cognitive digital assistant’ for people with severe memory impairment, but it could help all of us with research, brainstorming, recovering lapsed memories, and forming creative connections.

IBM’s new cognitive tool tackles the most common cause of memory failure: absence of context. Memory, for most of us, is a web of connections. Remembering a single aspect of an experience, we can call up others. To remember is to find the missing piece in a puzzle. If you can’t find the first clue, you can’t find the second, and you don’t have a mental map for the information you need.

Dr. Kozlowski says IBM has found the solution for our memory failures. His cognitive assistant models our behaviors and memories. It hears our conversations, studies our actions, and draws conclusions about our intentions from our behavior and speech patterns, and our conversations with others. From this data, it can discern when we have trouble with recall. It then will guess what we want to know, suggesting names and biographical data within milliseconds. By studying our individual quirks, it will learn what behavior is normal for us, and when we need help.

Synced with your phone, the automated cognitive assistant would search its database of phone numbers to find out who’s calling you. Before you answer, the assistant will display the caller’s name, highlights of your recent conversations, and important events in the caller’s life. At a business meeting, your digital assistant will, on hearing certain words, recall related points mentioned in past meetings, and your research on the subject. It will display them on your mobile device, or ‘speak’ them into an earpiece.

It’s likely to be several years before IBM’s automated cognitive assistant is in common use. A few bugs stand in the way of commercialization, but it’s still an impressive achievement.