Mark 2016 as the year that researchers applied artificial intelligence (AI) to the challenges of cybersecurity. If machines can steer our cars and predict our shopping habits, then why not watch over our networks and servers too? IBM in May 2016 announced Watson for Cyber Security, in which the IT behemoth began teaching its pattern-recognition supercomputer to learn the difference between safe and risky data. That could ease the burden on overworked cybersecurity professionals, IBM hopes. Several universities involved with that project began having students train the system within the past several weeks, explained IBM Watson's Jeb Linton, chief security architect.

Last week I attended IBM (IBM) World of Watson as both a speaker and an attendee, and today as I sit in my neighborhood Starbucks (SBUX) thinking about everything, all I can say is WOW! This was one of the most interesting, inspiring and amazing events I have ever attended. And we are still in the very early stages of Watson, Cognitive and AI. I invite you to follow me as I learn more and write more about the wonderful world of Watson, all the companies that work with it and how it will change our industries, our businesses and our lives. As a wireless analyst and columnist, I come at this world of Watson from the wireless, telecom, internet and television angle.

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Using that information, water authorities or companies can target areas or homes where people are wasting water, and send specialized educational materials to let people know how they can cut down on water waste. Some of OmniEarth's customers have already started seeing results, with some reporting a 15 percent reduction in water use, just by using the conservation messages. Many people, Fentzke said, may not even realize that they're wasting water. There could be bad meters, leaks, or bad settings on automatic sprinkling systems that are contributing to the problem. "We've found it to be very effective in targeting people who may not even know that they're inefficient," Fentzke said.

Udacity, the education platform focused on helping workers gain skills they need for great careers in tech, has partnered with IBM Watson, Didi Chuxing and Amazon Alexa to offer a new nanodegree in artificial intelligence, the companies announced today at the IBM World of Watson conference. IBM Watson is co-developing the curriculum of the course with Udacity. Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing intends to hire students who successfully complete the nanodegree, as does IBM. And Amazon Alexa is serving as an advisor to Udacity in developing the new AI nanodegree. According to Udacity's founder Sebastian Thrun, who previously started Google's innovation shop Google X and its self-driving car initiative, the new AI nanodegree will be for students who already have a level of mastery in software development.

It's now a hired gun for thousands of companies in at least 20 industries. David Kenny took the helm of IBM's Watson Group ibm in February, after Big Blue acquired The Weather Company, where Kenny had served as CEO. In the months since then, the Watson business has grown dramatically, with well over 100,000 developers worldwide now working with more than three dozen Watson application program interfaces (APIs). Fortune Deputy Editor Clifton Leaf caught up with Kenny in mid-October, when IBM Watson's General Manager was in San Francisco, getting ready to open Watson West--the AI system's newest business outpost--and to launch the company's second World of Watson conference, a gathering of its burgeoning ecosystem of partners and users, in Las Vegas on Oct. 24. KENNY: Deep learning is a subset of machine learning, which essentially is a set of algorithms. Deep-learning uses more advanced things like convolutional neural networks, which basically means you can look at things more deeply into more layers. Machine learning could work, for example, when it came to reading text.

Researchers at Microsoft achieved what they say is a breakthrough in speech recognition claiming they've developed a system that's as effective or better than people with professional transcription skills. The software's word error rate (WER) is down to 5.9 percent -- an improvement from the WER of 6.9 the team reported in September. The milestone was enabled with the new Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, the software that enables those speech recognition advances (as well as image recognition and search relevance). Microsoft announced both developments two weeks ago, though the timing wasn't the best as IBM was holding its huge World of Watson event in Las Vegas. Watson, of course, is Big Blue's AI system made famous several years ago when it appeared on Jeopardy and, in advance of its latest rollout, made the talk-show circuit including CNN and CBS's 60 Minutes, where IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty talked up Watson's own achievements including the ability to discover potential cancer cures deemed not possible by humans, among other milestones.

We are just starting to discover the countless ways we can apply cognitive computing to healthcare,

While the oil and gas industry has had its share of ups and downs over the past decade, many financial institutions are banking on a very slow growth of oil prices in 2017. Though some believe that the efficiency gains that the oil industry can capture are quickly coming to an end, this sentiment is only capturing hard technology specifically related to oil and gas. To help bring the O&G industry to the 21st century, technology from other industries needs to be incorporated, using many hard-earned years of expertise and different lines of thinking. Oilprice previously mentioned incorporating food industry technology to increase safety standards when fracking, but incorporating technology from the IT industry is something that the O&G industry as a whole can benefit from. Whether its neural networks, machine learning, fuzzy logic, case-based reasoning or expert systems, AI has the potential to transform the industry.