Memorably spoken by Alexander Graham Bell, these were the first words ever heard through a telephone. Since then, speech has become the natural format for long-distance communication across the globe. The impact of voice-to-voice communication has meant that even written messages, sent via email and social media, have become increasingly conversational in tone. That Watson was not IBM Watson, of course, or Watson's namesake Thomas J Watson. But IBM Watson, by bringing a cognitive, learning approach to the absorption of data, has made it possible for computer systems to understand spoken language, and the more natural, colloquial way we now express ourselves in text.

Watson, IBM's artificial intelligence computer system, is ridiculously prolific. In the last few years it's written a cookbook, crafted a movie trailer, joined the debate team, and helped in medical education, among many other projects. The latest point on the system's resumé is to help make hospital stays more comfortable for patients and relieve the strain on doctors and nurses through smart speakers that can answer basic questions and grant patients' control over things like room temperature, the lights or the TV.

Which authors of this paper are endorsers? Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)

IBM Watson can do much more than answer questions on Jeopardy. Earlier this month, the artificial intelligence system created a movie trailer. It also powers driverless cars and is helping doctors with cancer care and research. Watson is IBM's bet on the next era of computing that is built to understand, reason, learn and interact, according to IBM Watson's Chief Marketing Officer Steve Gold. "It's not speech recognition like Siri, not speech synthesis like Alexa, but actually understanding human languages," Gold told Mashable.

IBM Research and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have joined forces to further develop the scientific field of machine vision – a core aspect of artificial intelligence. Big Blue and MIT will build the IBM-MIT Laboratory for Brain-inspired Multimedia Machine Comprehension, or BM3C, in Cambridge, Mass. Together they plan to develop cognitive computing systems that mimic the human ability to understand and integrate input from multiple sources for use in a variety of computer applications in industries such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. MIT researchers will collaborate with IBM scientists and engineers who will provide technology expertise and advances from the IBM Watson platform. The BM3C will address technical challenges around both pattern recognition and prediction methods in the field of machine vision that are currently impossible for machines alone to accomplish.

Over the last decade, the "data revolution" has touched every aspect of our work and personal lives. Today's business challenges have never been more complex, and the critical insights that can address these challenges are often buried in an avalanche of data. In today's marketplace, the business that wins, is the business that "thinks." The viability of a company in the marketplace now depends on its ability to use data and analytics to fuel a thinking business. Companies in industries as diverse as healthcare, retail, banking and manufacturing are already using cognitive technologies to reshape business and do things faster and more efficiently than ever before.

A look at IBM's Teacher Advisor tool, powered by Watson. The new-age approach to mathematics is drastically different to what most parents were taught during their own early education experience, and as such it's created a major pain point in nightly homework routines across America. But with a new initiative involving IBM's cognitive computing platform Watson, elementary math lessons could become easier for students, teachers and even parents. Over the last two years, the IBM Foundation has teamed with teachers and the American Federation of Teachers union to create an AI-based lesson plan tool called Teacher Advisor. The program essentially uses Watson's cognitive smarts to answer questions from educators and help them build personalized lesson plans, understand concepts and learn strategies to improve student comprehension.

IBM's famous supercomputer has accomplished many, many things these past years, from making movie trailers to saving a person's life. Now, it's also helping teachers make lesson plans by powering Teacher Advisor, a program IBM developed with the American Federation of Teachers. If you're thinking "How hard could a grade school lesson plan be?" Well, have you seen Common Core mathematics? It's not the same math from back in the day, and teachers who didn't grow up with it might have a tough time conjuring up a way to make it more understandable.

IBM Watson is a Cognitive Computer that has opened up new avenues of human - computer collaboration. IBM Watson has a lot of human language processing capabilities and extreme scale information retrieval. It has found a lot of applications in the areas of Healthcare, Banking, Consumer Retail and Lifestyle, thanks to the ability to understand complex information architectures and human life scenarios. Its ability to make continuous inferences based on repeated question - answering problems is amazing. It is a continuously learning machine with cognitive information processing abilities.

Watson can create one-to-one experiences for brands and consumers. Next week, IBM will begin showing display ads for Campbell's on The Weather Company's website with personalized recipes created by Watson and based on a user's location, what the weather is in the area and which ingredients they want to cook with. Here's how it works: When a user sees an ad for Campbell's on The Weather Company's website, they'll be able to ask Watson to suggest dishes to make based on they ingredients they say into their microphones. Additional APIs could be added to the mix in the future, said Monica Fogg, The Weather Company's head of ad product and brand marketing.