by Angela Guess
Eyragon Eidam recently wrote in GovTech, “While the images of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which an intelligent computer famously thwarts a human’s attempts to power it down, spark an unavoidable conversation, those working in the cognitive space say there is real potential for governments in a range of applications. During the Florida Digital Government Summit* Friday, May 13, IBM’s Tim Paydos discussed the use cases and what the ‘thinking’ machines’ path forward looks like.”
Eidam goes on, “(1) Assisting in criminal investigations. Among the many applications, Paydos, the company’s vice president of Worldwide Cognitive Solutions, said the tool provides a real value in the criminal investigation space. Following the Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013, and 2015 and 2016 terror events in Europe, Paydos said the cognitive technology proved to be a valuable resource for investigators.”
Eidam continues, “(2) Making connections. The ability to match seemingly unrelated information and aliases to specific individuals has also been of value to the law enforcement and those in the national security space. According to Paydos, the ability to move past querying systems based on a set of pre-determined questions opens the door to new connections that otherwise might have gone unnoticed by analysts. What’s more, he said, is that analysts often clean the ‘dirtiness’ out of the data in an effort to standardize it for analysis, which can strip out the useful bits of information.”
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