Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Monday that IBM's artificial intelligence unit Watson should one day take the place of humans. "I would think the biggest value will come in when it actually replaces human labor, and machines don't come round annually and ask for higher wages, and they don't need health care, and maybe a little maintenance," Buffett said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "It should replace people in a big way, unless some other products do the same thing," he said, noting Watson's potential for reading X-rays faster and better than humans. Buffett told CNBC last week he owned about 81 million shares of IBM at the end of 2016 and sold off about a third of that stake in the first and second quarters of 2017. "Watson is a pretty amazing invention," Buffett said. "I'm sure the revenue is growing very significantly but from a very small base."

IBM isn't at the forefront of artificial intelligence, Social Capital CEO and founder Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC on Monday, and he certainly isn't a fan of IBM's Watson. "Watson is a joke, just to be completely honest," he said in an interview with "Closing Bell" on the sidelines of the Sohn Investment Conference in New York. "The companies that are advancing machine learning and AI don't brand it with some nominally specious name that's named after a Sherlock Holmes character." "I think what IBM is excellent at is using their sales and marketing infrastructure to convince people who have asymmetrically less knowledge to pay for something," Palihapitiya added. "I put them and Oracle in somewhat of the same bucket."

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems can recognize your speech like Siri or identify images like Facebook, but these types of machine intelligences are built on statistical approximation, using loads of data to make educated guesses. Though statistical approximation was a significant technological advancement for devices, experts at Future Lab's AI Summit in New York City believe that it is time to expand the bounds of artificial intelligence--to democratize it--by "engineering knowledge." For Puri, that is the next level of AI--its ability to not only say what something is, but to reason and understand the intent of its being, to answer the'why' question. "Working with kids gives you grounding. They ask questions because they are not shy," says IBM Watson's Chief Architect, Dr. Ruchir Puri, in an interview with EdSurge.

XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world's grandest challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification, crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies as a formula to create exponential impact in the grand challenge domains facing our world.

Until now, creative minds have been human. But IBM's Watson, not content to use its computing power solely to cure cancer or cook you dinner, has added filmmaking to its repertoire. The cognitive computer turned up at the Tribeca Film Festival to do what so many in the industry were doing there: networking with peers to get ideas for new projects. IBM used the festival to kick off its Storytellers With Watson competition, which calls on creative types to submit a one-minute video that details how they believe Watson can assist them with telling stories through film, web content, gaming, augmented reality, or virtual reality. To generate ideas, IBM held an event in New York City last week to demo some of Watson's most creative work, like making a chilling trailer (below) for the AI horror movie Morgan and artistic contributions to an Alex Da Kid song.

The XPrize program is no stranger to moon shots. From capturing carbon to cleaning water -- even literal trips to the moon and Star Trek-style tricorders -- the contest seeks the boldest solutions to humanity's greatest challenges. That tradition continues in the company's latest competition, the IBM Watson AI XPrize, in which 147 teams from 22 countries will compete for a $5 million purse over the next four years. The AI competition will be the first such XPrize that is "open" in that teams will be free to solve any issue they want. There will be a number of "domains" (read: themes) that they can choose from including Health and Wellness, Civil Society, Space and Exploration or Energy and Resources, but so long as the competitors solve their problems using AI, their projects can straddle any or all of these domains.

Thinking computers no longer belong in fiction. For the past few years, people have witnessed the AI revolution unfold – from virtual assistants that can sing you'happy birthday' to AI-infused fitness coaches that provide you with real-time encouragement. With industry leaders like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM leading the charge, consumers and businesses alike expect the revolution to pick up the pace. Today, one of the most promising AI solutions available in the market would be IBM Watson. Named after IBM's first CEO, Watson is a question answering system that incorporates natural language processing, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, and machine learning.

Hannover, Germany, - 25 Apr 2017: ABB and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a strategic collaboration that brings together ABB's industry leading digital offering, ABB Ability TM, with IBM Watson Internet of Things cognitive capabilities to unlock new value for customers in utilities, industry, transport and infrastructure. At Hannover Messe, IBM and ABB announced a new partnership in industrial artificial intelligence that will combine the power of IBM Watson with ABB Ability, the comprehensive digital offering of ABB, to unlock new value for clients in utilities, industry, transport and infrastructure. Pictured, Harriet Green, General Manager Watson IoT, Customer Engagement and Education, IBM; and Guido Jouret, Chief Digital Officer, ABB, discuss the future of cognitive and industrial machines. "This powerful combination marks truly the next level of industrial technology, moving beyond current connected systems that simply gather data, to industrial operations and machines that use data to sense, analyze, optimize and take actions that drive greater uptime, speed and yield for industrial customers," said ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer. "With an installed base of 70 million connected devices, 70,000 digital control systems and 6,000 enterprise software solutions, ABB is a trusted leader in the industrial space, and has a four decade long history of creating digital solutions for customers. IBM is a leader in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. Together, IBM and ABB will create powerful solutions for customers to benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution."

Since its introduction to the world in 2009, IBM's Watson supercomputer has been crushing humans in Jeopardy, helping chefs make food with unconventional recipes and even offering tech support. But what happens when the artificial intelligence machine puts its own spin on a photo booth? To find out, I checked out IBM's "Art with Watson: Hidden Portraits," an exhibit that's being displayed in New York City until May 7th. The gallery features portraits of historic personalities like Marie Curie and Nikola Tesla, which Watson helped artists create by feeding them data collected using its natural language and personality insights APIs. As part of this project, IBM is also showing off the Watson cognitive photo booth.

Automation is everywhere these days enabling users to accomplish a wide range of tasks – from ordering pizza, checking luggage at the airport, booking a hotel room, right through to booking a doctor's appointment. And the customer service industry is no exception. Advancements in technology continue to transform customer service interactions. By 2020, a Gartner study projects more than 85% of all customer interactions will be handled without the need for a human agent. From improvements in loyalty and brand reputation to new revenue streams, the pathway to real-time self-service in customer service brings huge opportunities to forward-thinking businesses.