With over 500 companies developing cognitive systems, we're seeing patterns emerge around the creation of cognitive systems at the business unit, business process, and application levels. By selecting a subset of these companies to compare, we can see a few of the leading business units and processes that are going cognitive. We also discover how various Watson services are combined to create to address these business needs. These topics and more were covered in the recent Emerging Cognitive Patterns webinar. A few highlights are discussed briefly below but refer to the full webinar slide deck for complete details.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI can also be used to analyze the data produced by IoT, social media, mobile phones and other sources to provide active learning analytics that can create a virtuous circle. Not too long ago, A.I. seemed a distant dream for many. Today, it is all around us. We carry A.I. in our pockets, in our cars, and in many of the web services we use throughout the day.

Google wants to play an even bigger role in managing people's daily lives, while also nudging them into an alternate reality, as the Internet company responds to competitive threats posed by Facebook, Amazon and Apple. As part of an onslaught of upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial intelligence into an Internet-connected device called Home, which echoes the Echo, Amazon.com's Meanwhile, Google will also delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality with a system called Daydream that's meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus's early lead in fabricating artificial worlds. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device. That feature, called Instant Apps, might have been the biggest breakthrough that Google announced Wednesday at its annual developers conference held in an amphitheater located a few blocks from its Mountain View, California, headquarters.

Oussama Khatib held his breath as he swam through the wreck of La Lune, 100 meters below the Mediterranean. The flagship of King Louis XIV sank here in 1664, 20 miles off the southern coast of France, and no human had touched the ruins – or the countless treasures and artifacts the ship once carried – in the centuries since. OceanOne, a humanoid robotic diver from Stanford, allows new underwater exploration capabilities. With guidance from a team of skilled deep-sea archaeologists who had studied the site, Khatib, a professor of computer science at Stanford, spotted a grapefruit-size vase. He hovered precisely over the vase, reached out, felt its contours and weight, and stuck a finger inside to get a good grip.

It's Moogfest season here in Durham, so there's been a lot of the discussion in the office around music, data lakes, and the heat map we're building for the festival. But the conversation took a different turn, thanks to a tweet. Many months ago when I was at IBM Insight, I tweeted a snide remark about computer-generated jokes. Fast-forward to this week, when former "Monk" and Letterman writer Joe Toplyn responded with a link "proving" that computers could generate jokes that were funny ... at least to the easily amused. Amid the discussion, someone drove by playing crappy autotune pop music. This got me thinking about whether you could generate hit pop songs.

The speed of technological change is exponential, and what was yesterday's hot ticket quickly becomes tomorrow's old news. We are living in the midst of a huge surge of interest and research in Artificial Intelligence ( A.I.). It seems like every week there is a new breakthrough in the field and a new record is set in some task previously done by humans. If you don't already know what IoT, AI, VR, AR and the'bots' mean, you better get up to speed immediately; for these technologies are changing the way data is created, collected, interpreted and communicated. In the digital age -- 'data is money'.

At the NASCIO Mid-Year Conference in Baltimore last week, Government Technology talked to state CIOs about whether cognitive computing can help them deal with the data deluge. Wisconsin CIO David Cagigal sees a definite role for technology that learns from citizen behavior to inform services and anticipate future needs. Government Technology editor Noelle Knell has more than 15 years of writing and editing experience, covering public projects, transportation, business and technology. A California native, she has worked in both state and local government, and is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with majors in political science and American history. She can be reached via email and on Twitter.

The possible applications of AI for financial services can seem nearly limitless. Advances in AI and data analytics mean much greater quantities of data can be used to inform decision-making and asset price predictions, such as market events (product releases and recalls, regulatory approvals, acquisitions) and unstructured data (images, video footage and live streaming). AI tools are getting better at understanding context, too.

Google has designed its own computer chip for driving deep neural networks, an AI technology that is reinventing the way Internet services operate. This morning at Google I/O, the centerpiece of the company's year, CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google has designed an ASIC, or application-specific integrated circuit, that's specific to deep neural nets. These are networks of hardware and software that can learn specific tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. Google uses neural nets to identify objects and faces in photos, recognize the commands you speak into Android phones, or translate text from one language to another. This technology is even transforming the Google search engine.

Human communication goes beyond words. It is complex, rich in nuances and frequently includes non-verbal signs. Yet despite our technological limitations it is not impossible for some aspects of communication to be emulated by a machine with surprising effect. This has been part of the challenge in developing Harlie (Human and Robot Language Interaction Experiment), a smartphone chatbot app developed by researchers at the CSIRO and University of Queensland. It's primarily aimed at people who may have trouble conversing including those with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia, or even autism.