IBM Researcher Jeff Kephart Talks On Symbiotic Cognitive Computing

Jeff Kephart, a research scientist at IBM Research, will present a talk Thursday on IBM's work on developing real-world environments for testing a system designed to improve decision-making by sharing it among multiple humans and software agents.

His talk, "Realizing the Vision of Symbiotic Cognitive Computing," takes place 4 p.m. in Room 200 at Arthur K. Watson Hall (51 Prospect Street).

Kephart will describe a cognitive mergers and acquisitions prototype built at IBM as part of its vision for Symbiotic Cognitive Systems and discuss some of the project's challenges. Symbiotic Cognitive Systems are multi-agent systems in which humans and software agents work together to perform cognitive tasks, such as decision-making, better than either can alone. To help realize this vision, and to better identify its challenges, IBM has built a Cognitive Environments Laboratory equipped with cameras, kinects, wands, microphone arrays, and other devices. Through speech and gesture, one or more individuals interact -- much as they would with a human partner -- with a society of software agents that perform such functions as speech recognition, information retrieval, simulation, and decision analysis.

Kephart currently serves as a principal investigator on a cognitive computing research project with Spain's leading energy company, Repsol. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, Forbes, and comparable publications. He has co-authored over 150 papers (which have received over 17,000 citations), and over 35 issued US patents.