IBM offers its cognitive platform to academia and start-ups

IBM is offering its cognitive technology to the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, for its first Open-Power research facility that focuses on innovations in e-governance, healthcare and agriculture.

“Watson has tools that allow any application developer with no artificial intelligence (AI) background to conduct voice and sentiment analysis. If a bank wants a fraud detection app, it does not want Watson, but something more customised,” said Sumit Gupta, vice-president for cognitive systems at IBM.

Talview, a start-up, has been using Watson’s speech-to-text and document-conversion APIs to automate hiring through video assessments. It uses a variety of APIs ranging from tone analysis to personality insights to evaluate candidates without human intervention.

“Financial institutions are more likely to opt for the Power AI platform, which allows developers to customise APIs from scratch to suit their requirements,” Gupta said. Such institutions would use their own data and in-house AI teams to tailor their machine learning models, he added.

Fluid AI, a start-up nurtured by IBM, offers solutions in financial technology, banking, retail, e-commerce and governance. Chatbots are another area where clients are absorbing cognitive technology.

eMitra is a cognitive chatbot used by the government's eKaushal platform to help guide candidates to job roles based on location and interests.

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), AI allows businesses to analyse millions of records and understand trends.