The Corvus | August 2018
How Cognitive Commerce
Makes Everyone’s Life Easier
Aisha Sheidu-Balogun
It is estimated that
2.5 quintillion bytes
of data are created
every day; it’s okay
if you’re not entirely
sure what that means
but it means a lot.
Apparently, 90% of
the data in existence
today were created
in the last three
years. Yet, the way
we process that data
is not developing as
fast; roughly 80%
of data is still in the
dark. We know it’s
there, but we can’t
see it, we can’t use it,
it can’t help us solve
problems. However,
this is changing
gradually, thanks to
cognitive solutions.
As we all race towards digital, it is easy
to underestimate the real benefits of
digitalization. Why is it so important?
How useful can Big Data and Internet
of Things (IoT) really be without fully
understanding what they bring into
our lives?
Cognitive solutions
clarifies big data in
a way that benefits
us and businesses
around us. Human
activity is difficult
to
break
down
into binary data
and codes. It can’t
easily be distilled
into numbers and
statistics, charts and graphs. The
majority of the digital information
collected by our mobile devices, IoT,
connected home wares and wearable
tech-devices aren’t numerical. This data
comprising of natural speech, sight and
sound were essentially invisible before
cognitive.
It’s almost as if the Sci-Fi movies of
the 80s are becoming reality. Can
you remember Barney and Friends
- the American children's television
series that featured the title character,
Barney - the big purple dinosaur?
Interestingly, its only kids of the 90s
and early 2000s that can relate to
this as Barney has been replaced with
Cognitoy for today’s kids. Cognitoy is a
supercomputer packaged into this cute
little dinosaur. Cognitoy – an internet
connected smart toy that learns and
grows - was launched towards the end
of 2015 and brings Cognitive solution
into early learning years of children.
It connects to home Wi-Fi and allows
kids to directly engage in intelligent
conversations with it as it listens, speaks
and simultaneously evolves, learns and
grows with the kids. After the initial
details are entered into the toy by the
parent(s)/guardian(s), there’s no need
for further programming. Although
parents still have parental control via
the parent panel, Cognitoy constantly
evaluates the child’s abilities, changing
its interactions to further develop their
skills. It can answer questions, tell
stories, play games, crack jokes while
relating in a natural child appropriate
manner. Cognitoy is smart, constantly
evolving, easy to set-up and acts as an
educational buddy for kids.
The Forerunner of cognitive computing
is IBM’s Watson, a computer running
software capable of answering
questions posed in natural language.
How Cognitive Makes Everyone's Life Easier
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