Democratization of Expertise

way we live, work, play, and interact with each other. Throughout human history, the democratization of technology -making a technology available to the masses- has brought about sweeping cultural, social, political, and societal changes. In the last half-century, the democratization of computers, information, the Internet, and social media have revolutionized and transformed our lives. We now stand at the beginning of a new era sure to bring about waves of new revolutions -the cognitive systems era. Until now, humans have done all of the thinking. However, our lives are about to be infused with artificial entities capable of performing high-level cognitive processing previously possible only in the human mind. Systems capable of this kind of syntheticcognition" will achieve and surpass the level of human experts in almost every field of endeavor. Far from replacing humans, these cognitive systems will be our collaborators, teachers, confidants, colleagues, and companions. The future will belong to those of us who can better partner with these cognitive systems"--