Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing; understanding the differences

AI and Cognitive Computing imply the broad concept about computers being capable of performing functions that human are used to perform and thus, they are often used as interchangeable terms. However, there are significant differences between AI and Cognitive Computing, that more and more are relevant to understand by everyone and , especially, by the people whose work may fall or act in the intersection of the two.


Artificial Intelligence refers to the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines - and such processes include learning from constantly changing data, reasoning to make sense of data and, self-mechanisms to make decisions. Since human intelligence is rooted in sensing the environment (*), learning from the environment and processing the information from the environment, the aim of AI is, consequently, to simulate human senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch), simulate the learning and processing of data (machine and deep learning) and simulate the human responses (robotics).
AI applications have been developed around problem-solving, game playing, natural language processing, speech recognition, image processing, automatic programming, and, of course, robotics.


Cognitive Computing refers to individual technologies that perform specific tasks that facilitate human intelligence. Some of these have been around since the beginning of the internet, boosted in more recent years by breakthroughs in technology and computing power, making those technologies getting better and better at using data and algorithms to understand and simulate reasoning and human behavior. Cognitive computing applications include speech recognition, sentiment analysis, face detection, risk assessment, and fraud detection.

In summary, AI augments human thinking to solve complex problems and Cognitive Computing focuses on mimicking human behavior and reasoning to solve complex problems. In other words, Cognitive Computing tries to replicate how humans would solve problems while AI seeks to create new ways to solve problems that can potentially be better than humans.

AI is not intended to mimic human thoughts and processes but to solve a problem through the best possible algorithm. Cognitive Computing is not responsible for making the decision for humans but to supplement information for humans to make decisions.

The similarities and interchangeability in the use of these terms come foremost from the similar technologies behind both, that include machine learning, deep learning, NLP, neural networks, etc. 

And a final note: people do not fear Cognitive Computing as it is focused in supplementing human decision making - the fear is about AI systems being able to displace human decisions and functions.

Video - What is Artificial Intelligence

Video - What is Cognitive Computing

(* environment = where data comes from)