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29.05.2008 
In the future, computers will have to be one thing more than anything else:
invisible helpers, capable of assisting us in a range of tasks that overburden us.
Pictures of the Future reports how such digital assistants are already being used
to monitor offshore wind farms and Siberian pipelines — around the clock and under
incredibly harsh conditions. Similarly, they also help doctors to evaluate and
interpret the flood of data generated by today’s healthcare systems and are capable,
for example, of scanning hundreds of images and automatically identifying anomalies.
Other areas of application include the financial services sector, where Siemens
uses its own IT systems to assess credit risks and tailor its financial decisions
accordingly.
At the same time, such digital assistants are becoming more intelligent
all the time. In fact, according to an interview with Prof. Tom Mitchell, an expert
in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, by the year 2015
they will be smart enough to read and understand 80 percent of the information
on the Internet.
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