We present WatsonPaths, a novel system that can answer scenario-based questions. These include medical questions that present a patient summary and ask for the most likely diagnosis or most appropriate treatment. WatsonPaths builds on the IBM Watson question answering system. WatsonPaths breaks down the input scenario into individual pieces of information, asks relevant subquestions of Watson to conclude new information, and represents these results in a graphical model. Probabilistic inference is performed over the graph to conclude the answer. On a set of medical test preparation questions, WatsonPaths shows a significant improvement in accuracy over multiple baselines.

If you ask IBM about its plans for a given business opportunity--health care, financial services, pharma, even sports coverage--the answer will likely center on Watson, IBM's take on artificial intelligence, or cognitive computing, in IBM parlance. Since beating human champions in Jeopardy six years ago, Watson has been very long on promise and generated untold numbers of headlines. It's unclear as IBM (ibm) chief executive Ginni Rometty has said the company does not break that out in order to protect this crucial but nascent business. Over the past year, critics have voiced skepticism about Watson's real-world prospects especially as AI competitors--from Google (goog) to Microsoft (msft)--have brought their AI software offerings to market. The perception now is that Watson has not met lofty expectations.

IBM's Watson can apparently do everything. From manufacturing and medical treatment planning to portrait drawing and filing your taxes, there seems to be no limit to what the Jeopardy-winning AI can do. And next week, Watson will be offering its services to the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Those attending the event will be able to access a Watson-driven digital assistant named Fred via a mobile app. Fred will be able to help them navigate the courts, find food stands and vendors as well as figure out who is playing at any given time.

In a recent report, the National Retail Federation projected online sales in 2017 will grow three times faster than in-store sales. The report suggests 51% of Americans prefer to shop online rather than in stores--a figure that jumps to 67% for millennials and 56% for Gen Xers. With Amazon accounting for 43% of online sales in the US, only store sales will be disrupted more in the coming months. Additionally, eCommerce sales are also expected to reach $4 trillion by 2020 – making it 14.6% of total retail spending that year. So what does this mean for retailers?

The Building Cognitive Applications with IBM Watson Services series is a seven-volume collection that introduces IBM Watson cognitive computing services. The series includes an overview of specific IBM Watson services with their associated architectures and simple code examples. Each volume describes how you can use and implement these services in your applications through practical use cases. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer, this collection provides the information you need to start your research on Watson services. If your goal is to become more familiar with Watson in relation to your current environment, or if you are evaluating cognitive computing, this collection can serve as a powerful learning tool.

The AI XPRIZE is a 4-year, $5M competition that challenges teams globally to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful AI technologies to tackle the world's grand challenges. Currently, there are 148 teams in 22 countries competing for the prize, which will be awarded in 2020 on the TED Global stage.

NEW YORK CITY - 15 Jun 2017: LivePerson, Inc. (Nasdaq: LPSN), a leading provider of cloud mobile and online business messaging solutions, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have announced LiveEngage with Watson, the first global, enterprise-scale, out-of-the-box integration of Watson-powered bots with human agents. The new offering combines IBM's Watson Virtual Agent technology with LivePerson's LiveEngage platform, allowing brands to rapidly and easily deploy conversational bots that get smarter with each interaction, and lets consumers message those brands from their smartphone - via the brand's app, SMS, Facebook Messenger, or even the brand's mobile site - instead of having to call an 800 number. This legacy approach has not kept pace with the consumer move to smartphones and messaging apps, now the dominant way consumers communicate digitally. Forrester's 2017 Customer Service Trends report revealed that "Customers of all ages are moving away from using the phone to using self-service -- web and mobile self-service, communities, virtual agents, automated chat dialogs, or chatbots -- as a first point of contact with a company" and, according to Dimension Data, while there has been a 12 percent decline in phone volume, there has been growth in every digital channel[2]. LiveEngage with Watson helps meet that demand - allowing consumers to message large brands from their smartphones and instantly get answers from AI-powered bots, with human care representatives brought in seamlessly, in real-time, if a bot is not able to resolve an issue satisfactorily.

Equbot, the Fund's sub-advisor, is a technology-based company focused on applying artificial intelligence to investment analyses. It is part of the IBM Global Entrepreneurs start-up roster. IBM already has a Watson effort for financial services more broadly, which includes a Watson analytical tool for wealth advisors and wealth management groups, and Watson applications for financial markets analysis. The filing says Equbot will use IBM's Watson AI to perform a fundamental analysis of U.S.-listed stocks and real estate investment trusts based on up to 10 years of historical data and then apply that analysis to recent economic and news data. "Each day, the Equbot Model ranks each company based on the probability of the company benefiting from current economic conditions, trends and world events and identifies approximately 30 to 70 companies with the greatest potential for appreciation and their corresponding weights, while maintaining volatility comparable to the broader U.S. equity market."

Who will be the first to implement the new suite of Watson services? From the newly formed Watson Financial Services division, IBM has released the first suite of services covering regulatory requirements, financial crime insights, and financial risk modelling. These cognitive tools have been made possible following IBM's 2016 acquisition of global consulting operation, Promontory Financial Group. Promontory was originally working to provide support to banks dealing with the growing and tightening regulation and risk management within the financial services. It was the knowledge and expertise accessed in this acquisition that brought life to the new financial services-focussed Watson services, with regulation and risk accounting for two thirds of the suite, and a financial crime tool completing the set.