Cognitive Computing Systems: Their Potential and the Future

The articles in this special section focus on cognitive computing systems. Humans are arguably the most intelligent entities in the known universe; the objective of cognitive computing is to understand and replicate the essence of human intelligence. Autonomous systems are self-contained and self-regulated entities that continuously evolve in real time in response to changes to their environment. Fundamental to this evolution is learning and development. Cognition is the basis for autonomous systems. Human cognition refers to processes and systems that enable humans to perform both mundane and specialized tasks. Machine cognition refers to similar processes and systems that enable computers to perform tasks at a level that rivals human performance. While human cognition employs biological and natural means—the brain and mind—for its realization, machine cognition is a type of computation. Cognitive computing systems are autonomous systems that are based on machine cognition. A cognitive system views the mind as a highly parallel information processor, uses various models for representing information, and employs algorithms for transforming and reasoning with the information.