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The Weather Channel brings localized COVID-19 updates to your phone
The Weather Channel and its parent company IBM (yep, who knew?) have teamed up to bring coronavirus data, maps and charts to your phone. They're importing data from sources like the World Health Organization (WHO), and including info from reliable local and state sources, so you can get a picture of how the virus is spreading near you, across the country and around the globe.
Weather Channel app uses Watson to tell you when flu season is coming
Are you the sort who grows wary around other people when flu season hits? You now have another tool in your (slightly anti-social) arsenal. The latest version of the Weather Channel app for Android and iOS now includes a Flu Insights feature that uses IBM's Watson to warn you when influenza is likely to be on the warpath. The team-up wields machine learning to provide a 15-day flu forecast as well notifications that pop up at key moments, such as the start of flu season or confirmed outbreaks. Ideally, this will keep you from going to a house party full of soon-to-be-sick virus carriers.
The ISS' spherical robot helper has returned to Earth
Humans are one step closer to having robot assistants in space. The IBM- and Airbus-made CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) robot returned to Earth on August 27th after successful testing aboard the International Space Station. The spherical machine demonstrated both its AI skills (such as recognizing astronauts and offering instructions) as well as its ability to float through the ISS. Don't think this is the end to the experiments, though -- this is really just the start.
Every shot from the Masters will be posted online within five minutes
Golf fans who are planning to watch the Masters this weekend will have yet more ways to check out the action. For the first time at a golf tournament, practically every one of the more than 20,000 shots from the first major of the year will be available to view on the Masters website and app within five minutes of a player striking the ball.
AI is better at bluffing than professional gamblers
The act of gambling on games of chance has been around for as long as the games themselves. For as long as there's been money to be made wagering on the uncertain outcomes of these events, bettors have been leveraging mathematics to give them an edge on the house. As gaming has moved from bookies and casinos into the digital realm, gamblers are beginning to use modern computing techniques, especially AI and machine learning (ML), to increase their odds of winning. But that betting blade cuts both ways, as researchers work to design artificial intelligences capable of beating professional players at their own game -- and even out-wagering sportsbooks.
IBM's Watson reportedly created unsafe cancer treatment plans
Last year, studies presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting showed that IBM Watson was pretty darn good at creating treatment plans for cancer patients. Turns out, however, that the AI is still far from perfect: according to internal documents reviewed by health-oriented news publication Stat, some medical experts working with IBM on its Watson for Oncology system found "multiple examples of unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations." In one particular case, a 65-year-old man was prescribed a drug that could lead to "severe or fatal hemorrhage" even though he was already suffering from severe bleeding.
IBM extends deal using Watson to support veterans with cancer
IBM is making further use of Watson in the fight against cancer. The tech giant has extended a team-up with the US Department of Veterans Affairs that taps Watson for help treating soldiers with cancer, particularly stage 4 patients who have few other options. The new alliance runs through "at least" June 2019 and will continue the partnership's existing strategy. Oncologists and pathologists first sequence tumor DNA, and then use Watson's AI to interpret the data and spot mutations that might open up therapeutic choices.
Fox Sports' World Cup Highlight Machine is powered by IBM's Watson
We're only ten days away from the start of the FIFA World Cup 2018. And for soccer (er, football) fans in the US, Fox Sports will be the TV network responsible for bringing them all 64 games from Russia, at least if they want to watch them in English. But, beyond its broadcast offerings, Fox Sports wants to keep people engaged in the competition in different ways. Aside from its partnership with Twitter, which comes in the form of a show that'll stream live from Russia, Fox Sports has teamed up with IBM to build the ultimate World Cup Highlight Machine. Powered by Watson artificial intelligence, this video hub lets you create on-demand clips from every FIFA World Cup tournament dating back to 1958.
IBM's Watson-based voice assistant is coming to cars and smart homes
IBM has officially launched the Watson Assistant at its annual Think conference, and you might encounter it in various locations in the future. It's not tied to a single or even just a few products, you see -- unlike Siri that's tied to Apple's products, IBM's partners can load it onto their cars, smart home devices, office gadgets, so on and so forth. It could be infused into hospitality applications, say to serve as a smart assistant for hotels. It could have a future in retail, banking, and just about any industry, since the tech titan's partners can teach it a specific industry's lingo.
IBM is sending Watson to the Grammys
After winning Jeopardy and designing cancer-treatment plans, IBM Watson is now strutting off to the red carpet of the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. The tech giant's versatile AI system will be curating and distributing award-show content and images of everyone's favorite music stars in real time, straight from the red carpet to people's social media feeds.
A Nanjing Massacre survivor's story lives on digitally
On the morning of December 13th, 1937, Japanese troops pounded on the door of Xia Shuqin's family home in Nanjing, China. Thirteen people had taken shelter under this particular roof: Eight-year-old Xia, her mother and father, two grandparents, four sisters (one, four, 13 and 15 years old), and four neighbors. The Japanese army had ridden into the city on horseback that morning and faced little resistance; the Chinese army had made a full, chaotic retreat the prior evening, December 12th. When Xia's father answered the door, the Japanese soldiers immediately shot and killed him. They bludgeoned and killed her one-year-old sister. They raped and killed her mother. They killed her grandparents. They raped and killed her 13-year-old and 15-year-old sisters. And they bayoneted Xia three times in the arm and back.
IBM is installing a Watson AI lab at MIT
Both MIT and IBM are leaders in the field of Artificial Intelligence and now they're teaming up. IBM announced on Thursday that it had reached a 10-year research partnership agreement with the university worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. That investment will see more than 100 researchers from both organizations collaborating to advance four key focus areas within the AI field.
IBM's Watson is creating US Open tennis highlight videos
When it's not busy healing America's broken criminal sentencing system, Watson is creating highlight videos of tennis matches. That's probably one of the things one could say if IBM's AI system were human. The tech titan has just launched a suite of Watson-powered AI solutions for its enterprise customers, and the US Open is already using one of them to generate highlights of its matches. IBM calls the suite "Watson Media," and the US Tennis Association is using one of its features called "Cognitive Highlights."
Watson is helping heal America's broken criminal-sentencing system
The American criminal-justice system's sentencing system is among the fairest and most equitable in the world ... assuming you're wealthy, white and male. Everybody else is generally SOL. During the past three decades, America's prison population has quadrupled to more than 2.3 million people. Of those incarcerated, 58 percent are either black or Latino (despite those groups constituting barely a quarter of the general US population). The racial disparity in America's justice system is both obvious and endemic, which is why some courts have started looking for technological solutions. But can an artificial intelligence really make better sentencing recommendations than the people who designed it? We're about to find out.
IBM's AI can predict schizophrenia by looking at the brain's blood flow
Schizophrenia is not a particularly common mental health disorder in America, affecting just 1.2 percent of the population (around 3.2 million people), but its effects can be debilitating. However, pioneering research conducted by IBM and the University of Alberta could soon help doctors diagnose the onset of the disease and the severity of its symptoms using a simple MRI scan and a neural network built to look at blood flow within the brain.
Google wants to sell quantum computing in the cloud
Whether or not you believe Google has honest-to-goodness quantum computers, the bigger problem is their limited access: they're largely off-limits outside of the company itself. That could change sooner than you think, though. Bloomberg sources understand that Google is gearing up toward using its quantum systems in a "faster, more powerful" computing service than it offers today. It recently started offering access to researchers in order to spur development of tools and apps (including through an open source Project Q initiative), and there's a new lab it describes as an "embryonic quantum data center." It's looking at the practical realities of quantum computing, in other words.
IBM’s Watson will analyze Wimbledon to suggest the best matches
IBM's Watson can apparently do everything. From manufacturing and medical treatment planning to portrait drawing and filing your taxes, there seems to be no limit to what the Jeopardy-winning AI can do. And next week, Watson will be offering its services to the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
New FDA policies could hasten approvals of 'lower risk' health tech
The FDA is making an effort to keep up with the digital world. The commissioner of the FDA said in a statement yesterday that the agency would be outlining ways to streamline the regulation of digital health devices.
IBM will put connected car data to better use
As cars get smarter, we're going to have to deal with all of the information our daily drives create in a way we've never had to bother with before. Thankfully, IBM is offering to be the middleman that represents our vehicles in the confusing new world of automotive cloud telematics. The company has signed a deal with BMW that will see the BMW CarData platform connect to IBM's Bluemix cloud. The idea is that IBM will host and analyze your information and then pass it to third parties -- with your consent -- when required.
IBM's computing power will tackle the world's biggest problems
IBM's Watson is celebrated for winning at Jeopardy, cooking exotic meals and collaborating with Grammy-winning producers, but its capacity for doing good may its most important skill. The company's famous AI system is able to create cancer treatment programs that are as good as what human oncology physicians recommend. Watson also saved the life of a 60-year-old woman from leukemia last year in Tokyo. Obviously recognizing the potential, IBM announced Science for Social Good, a new program that will pair Watson's AI, cloud and "deep science" technologies with postdoctoral academic fellows to help solve the world's biggest challenges.
