As IBM’s Rob High discussed in a recent ABJ article, leadership in artificial intelligence has been a reality for years. Most people are familiar with IBM’s focus on cognitive computing through Watson, the “Jeopardy” winning natural language processor that has a major presence in Austin. In addition to my company, SparkCognition, organizations such as Umbel, Lucid, WayBlazer, and CognitiveScale are advancing machine learning in their respective verticals. Whether it is energy, security, health care, travel, or retail, the AI sector in Austin is leading the industry. And that’s all before we even get to the University of Texas Computer Science Department, which is the largest in the country and a top 10 program.

* * *

That last villain — fear — may seem somewhat out of place to many, but I include it here for good reason. Through our evolutionary history, our brains have been finely tuned to focus on risks and downsides, weighing them more heavily than the opportunities before us. Until now, the tight control exercised by our amygdala — that structure within the “reptilian” part of our brain that injects fear into our thought process — has arguably been beneficial to us. We have survived so long after all, fleeing lions, tigers and bears just in time to procreate and spawn another generation. But I believe that we now have more to gain by overcoming this bias toward fear. Most would hopefully agree that future man should be guided more by the pursuit of opportunity than the avoidance of loss and imagined downside. The past bears witness that it is precisely when we have given in to our fears that we diminish our collective potential and show history the ugly side of humanity.

Read original article


Tags: