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Information technology firm IBM on Monday unveiled the seventh annual ‘IBM 5 in 5’ – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.
The five innovations include touch (will be able to touch through your phone), sight (a pixel will be worth a thousands words), hearing (computers will hear what matters), taste (digital taste buds will help one to eat smarter) and smell (computers will have a sense of smell).
The IBM 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s research and development labs around the world that can make these transformations possible, the company said in a statement.
This new generation of machines will learn, adapt, sense and begin to experience the world as it really is. This year’s predictions focus on one element of the new era, the ability of computers to mimic the human senses - in their own way, to see, smell, touch, taste and hear, it said.
“We envision a day when computers make sense of the world around them just like human brain relies on interacting with the world using multiple senses,” Ramesh Gopinath, Director – India Research Lab and Chief Technology Officer, IBM South Asia said.
In the future, ‘brain-like’ capabilities will let computers analyse features such as colour, texture patterns or edge information and extract insights from visual media.
In the next five years, by learning about emotion and being able to sense mood, systems will pinpoint aspects of a conversation and analyse pitch, tone and hesitancy to have more productive dialogues that could improve customer call centre interactions, or allow people to seamlessly interact with different cultures, the company said.
IBM scientists are developing applications for the retail, healthcare and other sectors to simulate touch, such as the texture and weave of a fabric -- as a shopper brushes his/ her finger over the image of the item on a device screen.
“Cognitive computing systems will help us see through complexity, keep up with the speed of information, make more informed decisions, improve our health and standard of living, enrich our lives and break down all kinds of barriers, including geographic distance, language, cost and inaccessibility,” Gopinath added.
>ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in
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