Most new cars offer some sort of voice-recognition feature, and generally speaking, they're all terrible. The majority of them rely on pre-programmed phrases and prompts, and even these simple inputs are often misunderstood. Consumers usually ignore them altogether, and until cars get smarter, that isn't going to change. IBM and Arizona-based automaker Local Motors have just debuted a vehicle that redefines the term "smart car." Named Olli, the self-driving EV is powered by IBM's Watson technology platform, meaning it's powerful enough to engage in authentic dialog with all 12 of its riders.

Olli will be exclusive to DC these next few months, but Miami and Las Vegas will get their own in late 2016. Local Motors is also in talks to test the bus in cities outside the US, including Berlin, Copenhagen and Canberra. It's unclear if anyone can get the chance to ride one, since these are merely trial runs, but you can ask local authorities if the EV makes its way to your city. If and when the time comes that driverless public vehicles can legally shuttle passengers, you'll be able to summon an Olli through an app, just like Uber. And if Local Motors' plans pan out, a lot of people around the globe will be using that app: Company co-founder John Rogers envisions building hundreds of micro-factories all over the world that can 3D print an Olli within 10 hours and assemble it one.

IBM has teamed up with Local Motors, a Phoenix-based automotive manufacturer that made the first 3D-printed car, to create a self-driving electric bus. Named "Olli," the bus has room for 12 people and uses IBM Watson's cloud-based cognitive computing system to provide information to passengers. In addition to automatically driving you where you want to go using Phoenix Wings autonomous driving technology, Olli can respond to questions and provide information, similar to Amazon's Echo home assistant. The bus debuts today in the Washington D.C. area for the public to use during select times over the next several months, and the IBM-Local Motors team hopes to introduce Olli to the Miami and Las Vegas areas by the end of the year. By using Watson's speech to text, natural language classifier, entity extraction, and text to speech APIs, the bus can provide several services beyond taking you to your destination.

The Mad Men era of advertising is long behind us, but some of its lessons are timeless: not least those imparted by David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy & Mather, who was once described by Time magazine as "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry". That was in 1962, but even today, 17 years after his death, Ogilvy remains one of advertising's most revered minds, universally acknowledged as the father of modern advertising and credited with pioneering a unique style of ad that didn't insult the intelligence of the individual. But what could today's advertising leaders, or indeed those just starting out on their advertising careers, learn from Ogilvy? The Drum decided to find out, teaming with IBM's Watson to analyse Ogilvy's myriad writings and talks to draw out insights and advice. A man of many words, Ogilvy became the authority on advertising in his day, penning a number of books on the subject and representing the industry in numerous TV and newspaper interviews.

IBM today took the wraps off its first big foray into the world of self-driving cars, not as the driver of them, but as the brain behind making your self-driving journey a little more interesting: IBM Watson, the company's AI platform, is powering services in Olli -- an electric-powered vehicle that can carry up to 12 people that has been designed by Local Motors, a car maker based out of Arizona that uses newer technologies like 3D printing to bring down the cost of making cars on a low-volume basis. The cars will start operations first in Washington, DC, before expanding to deployments in Miami-Dade County and Las Vegas later this year. IBM says Miami-Dade County will run a pilot to transport people around Miami with autonomous vehicles. Local Motors and IBM, along with Intel, have worked together before, specifically on its Rally Fighter concept car. It looks like Olli might be the first commercial product that has resulted from the partnership.

We've been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence and machine learning lately. From the big screen to Netflix, AI is a popular theme in Hollywood. Its most exciting developments, however, are in the real world, where tremendous strides in creating human-like cognitive capabilities are tackling real challenges. The goal is neither self-awareness nor autonomy. Rather, the forefront of cognitive computing is advanced systems that learn at scale, reason with purpose and interact with us naturally.

The Drum has released the first magazine edited using artificial intelligence (AI) following a partnership with IBM Watson to create the special issue. The magazine, published today (15 June), includes a number of features that involved the analytical functions that IBM's AI can provide in order to examine the role such technology can provide to modern day marketers. These will be available to match and play against other opponents through a specially created new online app. Those without a card will also be able to challenge other marketers in the industry by logging into the app and comparing their scores with further competitors. Watson has also been trained to answer questions put to it by industry luminaries around the insights of advertising legend David Ogilvy and a number of predictions around potential winners at Cannes Lions this year have also been made by the AI.

That dream of universal expertise is what IBM says its Watson question-answering, machine-learning system makes possible. Watson can be trained to answer questions on any subject you choose. The system uses natural language processing to read huge numbers of documents, extracts and organises information about a particular topic and then refines its understanding of that subject based on human feedback. But how useful are the answers given by Watson and how difficult is it to train? One person who's well-placed to talk about using the Jeopardy!-winning

"The models used in this pilot will be designed to continue to evolve according to a user's nutrition and activity habits along with other contextual information, which may improve the ability of Watson to predict glycemic excursions and other trends through the Medtronic app," said Annette Bruls, president of Medtronic's global diabetes service and solutions unit, during the CES conference earlier in 2016.

In July, we talked about whether the change in law should be characterized as "Disruption, Eruption or Interruption?" This week, we drill down into one likely source of change, IBM's Watson. Lawyers have been thinking for a while about whether artificial intelligence would ever start to displace or complement lawyers. Richard Susskind, the leading legal futurist/technologist, did his work in this area starting in the mid-1980s. In the August issue of the ABA Journal, one of the commenters to an article about LegalZoom feared: "Once we have fully artificial intelligence enhanced programs like LegalZoom, there will be no need for lawyers, aside from the highly specialized and expensive large-law-firm variety."