Beyond silicon: cognition and much, much more – The IET/BCS Turing Lecture

Responsible for IBM’s corporate technical strategy, Global University Relations and the IBM Academy – a worldwide organisation of around 1,000 IBM technical leaders, it’s fair to say Dr. Meyerson is a highly respected figure in the world of computing, data and innovation.

For a prestigious lecture series with technology and innovation at its heart, it didn’t bode brilliantly that the microphone at Cardiff University didn’t work. 

Following a brief introduction, Dr. Meyerson took the lectern. His gentle American accent began to tell of IBM, and how it is an organisation which apparently doesn’t shout about its successes. Perhaps it doesn’t need to. Its prominence in semiconductor R&D, and its key role in developing WiFi as we know it today were offered by way of initial credentials.

From there Meyerson spoke in broader terms. The most important requirements for the growth of any business were given as the ability to innovate, the ability to effectively allocate talent and the ability to manage a global organisation; while two key elements of sustainable innovation are People and Global Infrastructure. 

These are ideas most IT or recruitment companies will appreciate, but a concept of the world as a large interconnected laboratory appears to be one with which IBM has truly flown.

Ongoing innovation was not to be undervalued, he asserted. Changing small things iteratively had led from equally capable computers the weight of ocean liners, to computers able to sit on his lectern. We must always seek to innovate, even in small ways. 

Despite this, there is only so long before technology as we currently know it runs its course. Considerable attention was given to the power of discontinuous innovation and its major major material impact on business and society.

• Elements employed in silicon technology are too many and have been in excess since 2006.
• Shrinking technology is not getting faster or less costly in performance or production.
• We have reached the foundational limits of silicon and scaling has been dead for a decade.

‘Big’ sounding announcements like these were made with such clear assertion and authority you couldn’t fail to make a note, even if you couldn’t entirely understand what they meant.

The Datacentre Solution

Near-term technology solutions for the above issues include scale by system integration. Or in other words, datacentres. And these datacentres will employ new 3D Chip bonding which will stack to give greater capacity. There will continue to be a need to store, process and analyse data in many forms, with medical obligations being particularly key.

Data, Dr. Meyerson suggested, is the new oil. Raw it is nothing, but refined it can run the world. We need to rethink concepts of computers and data, as well as changes in system architecture and the need for new data-centric architecture.

Big data needs to be refined through analytics, producing new systems of engagement, systems of insight and systems of record. But new architectures will additionally pose new challenges, some of which involve social media, influencers and security.

Cognitive Computing and Watson

In the closing section, Dr. Meyerson spoke of cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and the progress of IBM’s own Watson Unit, which concentrates on extending levels of human interaction.

The need for this was underlined through the idea that healthcare is ‘dying of thirst in an ocean of data’, and that medicine is too complex. A ‘context multiplier effect’ incumbent in much of Watson will newly enable better informed decisions. In much the same way that ‘off label’ medicines and combinations of medicines have been used successfully to treat conditions they were not necessarily designed to treat (a story told in the recent Oscar-nominated film Dallas Buyers Club). This will give new insights and new value.

Watson and its influence in the developing knowledge areas around human genomics and system insights will be critical, according to Dr. Meyerson, because everything else has been done and is drawing to a close.

• The innovators of tomorrow will need a new mix of skills to marry complex systems producing big data.
• Analytics can extract unprecedented insights and will be as common as the pocket calculator.
• We have responsibility to enable solutions for a smarter planet, with all the societal benefits that entails.

These positive and optimistic closing points ran in parallel with a sense that we are at a dangerous tipping point of finite technology development, an idea that not much can be done with current resources and a fundamental rethink of innovation is required. There are reasons to be hopeful, it seems, but also reasons to be careful.