We keep producing and storing more and more data to make more reliable and trustworthy decisions. While each byte of information brings us closer to the optimal decision, the processes become too complex for humans. AI tools come in handy, amplifying our intelligence and allowing us for making informed decisions devoid of cognitive bias. The startup Cognitum offers such a tool that, while capable of understanding heaps of data, is easily programmable in the natural language.

That’s right: the Cognitum solution does not require a programming background from its end users. All tasks can be specified directly in a controlled natural language – the 5GL programming language based on specifications written in natural language.

So far, Cognitum has been successfully applied in four large-scale projects. The first of them, Collaborative Ontology Engineering, is a service desk support system that was designed for one of the leaders in the pharmaceuticals market. It allows the users to create complex ontologies and guides the researchers, letting them enter only sentences that are grammatical and logically valid.

The second project, finalized in collaboration with a global aircraft producer, is a tool for workers responsible for the control and repair of airplanes. The AI helps them to diagnose any problems that might occur and suggests the fastest paths leading to the elimination of flaws.

Clinical Decision Support System, the next project, is a database that aggregates oncology-specific knowledge from multiple sources, such as publications and recommendations, and helps to apply it to diagnose patients. Every patient’s medical history is stored in a strictly defined way, what helps to use it as a reference in other – similar – cases.

The largest of Cognitum’s projects so far, ran in cooperation with the government in Brasil, is a system for tax fraud detection. The AI is able to process heaps of data and notice patterns occurring over months. The use of natural language enables decision makers to modify the knowledge base without the help of programmers. The project is immensely successful – it already analyses 2 million transactions a day and has decreased lost tax revenues by 40%. As the AI learns and constantly improves itself, the outcome will probably become even more spectacular in the upcoming months.

Cognitum has been founded in 2010 by Paweł Kapłański, who holds a PhD degree in Computer Science from the Gdansk University of Technology. He applied his knowledge about AI and semantics to create the very first version of Cognitum. So far, this startup has gather over 5000 users from various fields – logistics, pharmaceuticals, space and aeronautics, finances, but also heavy industry or legal services. This year, they have been selected by Google to participate in their Launchpad AI program.