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IBM gives its Watson IoT headquarters a $200 million boost
IBM is betting big on internet of things and setting aside $200 million for its Watson IoT division's headquarters in Munich. The company says this investment, one of the biggest it's ever made in Europe, is a response to the growing demand for AI technologies and the capability to connect everything to the internet. Part of the money will go to setting up hands-on labs where its clients can work with a thousand researchers, engineers, developers and business experts in the city. In fact, the tech corp has already secured new partnerships with German automotive parts supplier Schaeffler, Netherlands-based dronemaker Aerialtronics and three facilities at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia.
IBM Watson's new job: third grade math teacher advisor
IBM's famous AI system has accomplished many, many things these past years, from making movie trailers to saving a person's life. Now, it's also helping teachers make lesson plans by powering Teacher Advisor, a program IBM developed with the American Federation of Teachers. If you're thinking "How hard could a grade school lesson plan be?" Well, have you seen Common Core mathematics? It's not the same math from back in the day, and teachers who didn't grow up with it might have a tough time conjuring up a way to make it more understandable. Watson's Teacher Advisor can help them create exercises and lessons to make it easier for kids to grasp Common Core math.
IBM and MIT team up to help AI see and hear like humans
Autonomous robots and other AI systems still don't do a great job of understanding the world around them, but IBM and MIT think they can do better. They've begun a "multi-year" partnership that aims to improve AI's ability to interpret sight and sound as well as humans. IBM will supply the expertise and technology from its Watson cognitive computing platform, while MIT will conduct research. It's still very early, but the two already have a sense of what they can accomplish.
IBM partnership puts Watson in your ear to help you at work
Smart earphones like Bragi's Dash aren't just for personal activities like music and running -- they could also help you get some serious work done. Bragi and IBM are partnering on ways to combine "hearables" like the Dash with Watson's Internet of Things platform to help you communicate and collaborate with your teammates. The Watson supercomputer could translate what you're saying for a coworker, for instance, or give you instructions and smart notifications. Higher-ups could benefit, too -- they could get a sense of your location and safety without relying so much on cameras, or have you authenticate with your voice.
Watson helped make a trailer for a horror movie about AI
IBM Watson can add yet another skill to its resume: the ability to make movie trailers. 20th Century Fox has tapped into the supercomputer's powers to create the first AI-made trailer for its upcoming thriller film Morgan. It's a fitting start for Watson's trailer-making career. Morgan is, after all, a sci-fi flick about a group of scientists who created a humanoid machine that rapidly gained capabilities and went out of control.
New tourism app has IBM's Watson guide you around Orlando
There's plenty to do in Orlando, Florida besides getting a tan -- what with Universal Studios, Disney World, the Epcot Center and SeaWorld. And a new app, backed by the supercomputing power of IBM's Watson, will tell you how to get the most out of every one of your minutes in the Sunshine State.
The Engadget Podcast returns!
In 2014 we said the Engadget Podcast was going on hiatus to "retool." Well, we haven't been sitting on our laurels. Over the last two years we've rethought our editorial mission, completely redesigned the website and, now, we're launching a new and improved podcast.
IBM's Watson AI saved a woman from leukemia
IBM's Watson has done everything from winning at Jeopardy to cooking exotic meals, but it appears to have accomplished its greatest feat yet: saving a life. University of Tokyo doctors report that the artificial intelligence diagnosed a 60-year-old woman's rare form of leukemia that had been incorrectly identified months earlier. The analytical machine took just 10 minutes to compare the patient's genetic changes with a database of 20 million cancer research papers, delivering an accurate diagnosis and leading to proper treatment that had proven elusive. Watson has also identified another rare form of leukemia in another patient, the university says.
IBM and Gogo join forces to dodge in-flight turbulence
In what might seem like an unlikely partnership, IBM's Watson division and Gogo Inc. (the people who bring you in-flight WiFi) have joined up to make flying a little bit smoother for everyone. As the Wall Street Journal reports, IBM is leveraging its $2 billion purchase of The Weather Company and Gogo's internet connection to give airline pilots a heads up on turbulence.
Olli is an IBM Watson-powered driverless electric bus
You might see a cute, driverless bus roaming the streets of Washington DC starting today. It's called Olli, and it's an autonomous electric minibus designed by Local Motors, which you might remember as the company that's planning to sell 3D-printed cars this year. While the automaker itself designed the 12-seater's self-driving system, it teamed up with IBM to use Watson's capabilities to power the EV's other features. Thanks to Watson, you can tell Olli where you're heading in natural language ("I'd like to go to [workplace.]") and ask it questions about how the technology works. Best of all, it won't kick you out even if you keep asking "Are we there yet?"
IBM Watson can customize your canned granola
Don't worry: IBM's Watson didn't whip up a bunch of needlessly complicated granola recipes for a cookbook that you must make (for science!). No, we're talking about its partnership with Kellogg's subsidiary Bear Naked, which is the first consumer brand to sell Chef Watson-inspired food. The partnership made it possible for Bear Naked to launch a website where granola enthusiasts can make custom blends. After you select a base -- cacao + cashew butter, chocolate or honey -- Watson looks through thousands of possible flavors to find ingredients it can suggest. It's a very simple process, and we wish Watson can customize each can of granola even further. But this could just be the beginning of services powered by IBM's AI that can personalize canned goods and other foodstuffs.
Watson made a simple apple pie complicated
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. As part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. When given the opportunity to prepare a recipe for our Cooking With Watson series, I picked Baltic apple pie because, hey, it's apple pie. You mix up some filling, dump it into a tin lined with dough, bake for 40 minutes and voila, you have a delicious dessert that you can even put ice cream on. Oh, the Baltic apple pie has pork in it? OK, forget the ice cream. But, a savory meat pie can't be that hard, right?
IBM wants to accelerate AI learning with new processor tech
Deep neural networks (DNNs) can be taught nearly anything, including how to beat us at our own games. The problem is that training AI systems ties up big-ticket supercomputers or data centers for days at a time. Scientists from IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center think they can cut the horsepower and learning times drastically using "resistive processing units," theoretical chips that combine CPU and non-volatile memory. Those could accelerate data speeds exponentially, resulting in systems that can do tasks like "natural speech recognition and translation between all world languages," according to the team.
IBM Watson powers Hilton's robotic concierge 'Connie'
IBM Watson is training for yet another job at the Hilton McLean in Virginia. The hotel has recently welcomed a new concierge named "Connie," you see, and it's actually a Nao robot powered by IBM's AI. Connie, named after the chain's founder Conrad Hilton, can greet guests when they arrive and answer questions about hotel amenities, schedule and services. It was designed to improve the more it interacts with people by storing every question guests ask for future reference. Besides answering inquiries about the hotel, Connie will also be able to recommend tourist spots, restaurants and other destinations, since it has access to WayBlazer's travel platform.
IBM's Watson can sense sadness in your writing
Artificial intelligence won't be truly convincing until it can understand emotions. What good is a robot that can't understand the nuances of what you're really saying? IBM thinks it can help, though. It just gave Watson an upgrade that includes a much-improved Tone Analyzer. The AI now detects a wide range of emotions in your writing, including joy or sadness. If you tell everyone that you're fine when you're really down in the dumps, Watson should pick up on that subtle melancholy. Watson is also better at spotting social tendencies like extroversion, and studies whole sentences (important for context) rather than looking at individual words.
XPRIZE is challenging A.I. to save the world
If the thought of artificial intelligence conjures up nightmares the likes of Terminator 2 and HAL 9000, XPRIZE's latest competition could disabuse you of that notion. Today at TED2016, XPRIZE is announcing a new contest that invites teams from around the world to come up with ways artificial intelligence can help solve some of the world's most challenging problems. The competition is done in collaboration with IBM and is thus called the IBM Watson A.I. XPRIZE: the Cognitive Computing Competition.
IBM's supercomputer knows what'll be hot this holiday
After elbowing its way into hospitals and restaurants, it was inevitable that IBM's supercomputer would turn its attention towards the retail business. IBM has launched Watson Trend, a service that harnesses Watson's deep learning smarts in order to discover the hottest and most desirable products to buy this holiday season. The machine will work out what's hot (and what's not) by trawling the web, looking through everyone's public conversations on social media, blog posts and product reviews. Once the information has been found, it'll run sentiment analysis to determine how people really feel about their new smartphones, TVs and tablets to work out the ones folks love the most.
Watson's melt-in-your-mouth Moroccan almond curry
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. As part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck.While it's no great surprise to see Watson conjuring up unusual flavor blends, I was surprised to find such subdued in this Moroccan almond curry. On paper the recipe looked to be leaning toward bland, but its clever combination of all the elements worked. Traditional Moroccan lamb curries have intense flavors highlighted by garlic, onion, sometimes ginger, cinnamon and then sweetened with honey and dried apricot to balance lamb's strong taste. Here, though, Watson prescribes small amounts of cardamom, cumin, turmeric. All told, the recipe is comprised of four separate parts, which you'll later pile together. These include: the curry-braised lamb, a pea puree, green salad and plain old basmati rice. This is a great choice if you want to show off for guests, and yet it's easy too: Because the meal is broken up in stages, much can be done the day before. It's also mild enough that even the pickiest eater will find some joy in the dish. I fed it to a couple kids under ten and they both ate it up.
IBM's Watson heads to SF with upgraded speech and vision analysis
Almost a year since IBM unveiled a huge new home for its Watson AI in New York City, the company is bringing the Jeopardy champ west. The new headquarters, dubbed Watson West, will launch in San Francisco next year and will serve as a regional hub for communicating with startups, VCs and the rest of Silicon Valley. It'll also be the new global HQ for IBM's Commerce business, which will focus on bringing Watson's capabilities to retailers and more consumer-focused companies. Watson has also gotten much smarter over the past year: For one, it's a much better conversationalist, with the ability to understand intent and meaning in language, as well as produce more realistic sounding speech. Watson has also received some major "vision" updates, with improved image and facial recognition. Devs can now also have Watson analyze photos and video from social media. Finally, Watson's new "Concepts Insight" service lets apps connect to deeper ideas, moving beyond the mere surface-level interpretations of text.
IBM names a new leader of its Watson Health unit
Former Philips Healthcare CEO Deborah DiSanzo is the new General Manager of IBM's Watson Health unit, which aims to provide the company's cognitive computer system to health care professionals and patients. At IBM, DiSanzo leads more than 2,000 employees and is charged with scaling Watson Health globally and expanding IBM's Watson Health Cloud initiative. The Watson Health Cloud attempts to collect large amounts of patient data and make it easier for doctors and companies to make health decisions. IBM has teamed up with Apple (specifically, ResearchKit and HealthKit), Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and other companies for the Cloud initiative.
