Duncan Anderson, CTO of IBM’s Watson Europe programme, visited Predict 2015 along with Newton the robot to assure us that artificial intelligence is here to help humans, not compete with them.

To date, IBM has taken great strides with its cognitive supercomputer, Watson, from playing Jeopardy to advising oncologists on cancer treatment.

The key to this artificial intelligence is data, which is something the world is now generating in abundance.

“Without data, it’s very hard to be intelligent,” Anderson explained.

“If you have all sorts of systems where you can answer questions, where you can interact with things – without the data, you are just having a nice chat.”

Words by Elaine Burke 

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