Whether you're interested in cognitive computing, artificial intelligence or machine learning, you probably know that the fourth industrial revolution is well underway and accelerating rapidly. The speed of change presents a challenge to developers who want to stay abreast of the latest ideas and approaches. Conferences, workshops and other meetings provide opportunities to learn where the jobs and technology is headed and a chance to learn and practice the skills necessary to keep up. Why you should attend: AI engineers, practitioners, researchers and scientists will discuss the latest developments in the field, while tutorials and workshops will give attendees a chance to hone their skills. Speakers will be drawn from a wide variety of sectors, including Microsoft, MIT, the National Science Foundation and NASA Ames Research Center.

Sears wants to use artificial intelligence to help to shop for your next tire. Sears Auto Center announced the pilot launch of its Digital Tire Journey, a web app that uses IBM Watson Natural Language Classifier service to help customers find the best tires that fit their needs. Hoffman Estates-based Sears says that beyond a vehicle's make and model, customers need tires that are built for their everyday routines, and its new AI-powered site is designed to make the shopping experience more efficient. Rather than using a drop down menu with available selections, Sears' Digital Tire Journey provides tire recommendations based on a customers answer to certain questions. The program asks questions like: "When it comes to tires, what's most important to you?"

What can bots do right now to make their user experience better than that of visiting a website? They can personalize the experience -- either with user context or AI. See, most sites try to appeal to the general user by splitting the homepage in one of two ways: by sales or by product category. They'd prominently display brands that have expressed their efforts in these areas -- like Nike or Yesah They have awesome watches, btw. This might be the case when choosing an outfit for a formal event.

If you've ever wanted to bottle up and save that holiday feeling - a new AI-produced drink could be just the ticket. "Holiday Spirit" is claimed to be the world's very first data-distilled rum and was created using IBM Watson. The supercomputer analysed data from social media posts in order to produce a bespoke rum "that tastes like a holiday". "In just six hours Watson was able to read 15 million posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter relating to holidays - and find the predominant emotions and concepts in those posts," explained Joe Harrod, big data analyst and AI expert, who works closely with Watson. "The machine then showed that feelings like joy and excitement should be part of a perfect holiday moment. "Then Watson read 5,000 rum reviews from review sites around the web, matching emotions from the reviews with ingredients.

If, for example, you're diagnosed with cancer, you might benefit from the platform, Watson for Oncology. "Normally it's up to a specialist doctor to meet with cancer patients, and to spend time reviewing their notes – which would arrive on paper format or in a string of emails," says Balkizas. "A doctor's decision will be limited to their individual experience and the information available in front of them." However, now the Memorial Sloan Cancer Treatment Centre in New York is training IBM Watson to be able to quickly provide evidence based recommendations to time poor clinicians. "It takes all those unstructured notes and restructures it in a way that the doctor can check easily, with treatment recommendations of which drug to give, which radiation or dosage," says Balkizas.

CES 2017 is all wrapped up but there's still plenty of buzz around the latest and greatest gadgets and gear that debuted at the annual tech mecca in Las Vegas. There were thousands of new products to digest, between wallpaper TVs, next-gen wearables and drones, and "smart" versions of pretty much every appliance and tool we use in our everyday lives. As expected, AI took center stage at this year's event. Most products were AI-powered, "smart" or "intelligent." It's already part of the lives of millions of people, and most customers at CES expected to see sufficiently mature and useful applications of AI.

It's been an interesting day. The 45th President of the United States of America took office just two hours ago, and he is clearly unlike any other President that has gone before him. So just for fun, I thought I might feed his inauguration speech into Watson in real-time, in order to see what the smartest computer in the world had to say about it. Would he notice any anomalies, or insights that the professional political commentators might have missed? Might we some people respect Trump a little more if they looked at his speech more analytically than emotionally?

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, a Cognitive Computing Competition, was announced on the TED Stage on Feb 17, 2016. It is a $5 million competition challenging teams from around the world to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful cognitive technologies to tackle some of the world's grand challenges. Every year leading up to TED2020, teams will go head-to-head at World of Watson, IBM's annual conference, competing for interim prizes and the opportunity to advance to the next year's competition. The three finalist teams will take the TED stage in 2020 to deliver jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring TED Talks demonstrating what they have achieved. Ideas will be evaluated by a panel of expert judges for technical validity and ultimately, the TED and XPRIZE communities will choose the winner based on the audacity of their mission and the awe-inspiring nature of the teams' TED Talks in 2020.

TLDR: IBM's Watson is about human augmentation, not termination