More PR for Cognitive Search
February 20, 2020
With available data growing faster than traditional search technology seems able to handle, ToolBox predicts, “‘Cognitive Search’ May Be the Sector to Watch.” Writer Santiago Perez considers:
“On an individual level, we have all grappled with the frustrating experience of trying to enter just the right keyword or combination of letters and numbers to get to the exact bit of data we need. But as data multiplies continuously in libraries and archives, a new sort of search with the ability to cut through the chaff is coming into its own. It’s called ‘cognitive search.’ As the term suggests, the ‘thinking’ is deeper than that in a traditional keyword search. It’s leveraged by artificial intelligence and machine learning and gathers insights from signals and behavioral data. The insights can come from activities such as employee visits to web pages, their interactions with each other via chat media or the documents they produce and store.”
Perez cites research (PDF) that indicates between 60 percent and 73 percent of information corporations have gathered is currently unused. However, wonder whether the focus is in the right place here—what is the quality of such data? Where does it originate, how was it gathered, and has anyone verified it? For the vast majority, the answer is “of course not.”
Be that as it may, both Amazon and Microsoft are forging ahead with machine-learning based cognitive search solutions to more thoroughly analyze all that (suspect) data. AWS’s Kendra is currently only available in northern Virginia, Oregon, and Ireland, but they do have a preview available for AWS users. Microsoft is positioning its Project Cortex as the “fourth pillar” of Microsoft Office. See the write-up for more details on each of these products.
Cynthia Murrell, February 20, 2020
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