Sesame Workshop and IBM Watson today announced that they are creating a vocabulary app and the Sesame Workshop Intelligent Play and Learning Platform. The new platform will be used by Sesame Workshop and IBM to create a series of cognitive apps, games, and toys to help kids learn. This is the first public action announced by the partnership, which was formed more than a year ago. The platform will run on IBM Cloud and the partners invite the "ecosystem of software developers, researchers, educational toy companies, and educators to tap IBM Watson cognitive capabilities and Sesame Workshop's early childhood expertise to build engaging experiences to help advance children's education and learning," according to a statement from IBM Watson. "When we first started 45 years ago, [our show] was basically using the technology of the day -- that was TV -- to give all kids access to high-quality education," Sesame Workshop COO Steve Youngwood told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

Queensland-based Icon Group has announced plans to adopt IBM Watson for Oncology, an artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing platform that will provide the organisation's oncologists with access to massive amounts of global research to help them better inform patient treatment plans. "Being in the cancer care sector, we've been watching with great interest the way that Watson for Oncology has been utilised in other markets," Cathie Reid, co-founder of Icon Group, told ZDNet. "There's an incredible amount of medical literature already available and that's growing at an exponential rate and being able to have that information available in a curated form at the touch of your fingertips is something that our physicians are very excited about.

We're starting to get a better picture of how artificial intelligence could help doctors better treat cancer. And in data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, IBM Watson Health gave a snapshot of how it's playing out so far. The studies looked at concordance rates, or how often Watson for Oncology reached the same course of treatment as the cancer doctors at different cancer centers around the world. At Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Center in India, for 112 cases of lung cancer, there was 96.4% concordance between Watson and the doctors. For 126 cases of colon cancer it was 81% of the time, and for 124 cases of rectal cancer cases were 92.7%.

We're starting to get a better picture of how artificial intelligence could help doctors better treat cancer. And in data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, IBM Watson Health gave a snapshot of how it's playing out so far. The studies looked at concordance rates, or how often Watson for Oncology reached the same course of treatment as the cancer doctors at different cancer centers around the world. At Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Center in India, for 112 cases of lung cancer, there was 96.4% concordance between Watson and the doctors. For 126 cases of colon cancer it was 81% of the time, and for 124 cases of rectal cancer cases were 92.7%.

Background: IBM Watson for Oncology is an artificial intelligence cognitive computing system that provides confidence-ranked, evidence-based treatment recommendations for cancer. In the present study, we examine the level of agreement for lung and colorectal cancer therapy between the multidisciplinary tumour board from Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Bangalore, India, and Watson for Oncology. Methods: Watson for Oncology is a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA) trained cognitive computing system that uses natural language processing and machine learning to provide treatment recommendations. It processes structured and unstructured data from medical literature, treatment guidelines, medical records, imaging, lab and pathology reports, and the expertise of Memorial Sloan Kettering experts to formulate therapeutic recommendations. Treatment recommendations are provided in three categories: recommended, for consideration and not recommended.

Surprisingly, Amazon Alexa doesn't have a good way to search for Alexa skills by voice. You can't say that you want to play word games, need a skill to check airport security wait times, or feel like meditating. Alexa doesn't know what to tell you. Amazon released its own "Skill Finder" skill last year, but it's a bare-bones experience that can only read off the most popular apps in certain vague categories, or list the top or newest Alexa skills. You can't ask it for a skill with a specific use case or functionality.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly moving from "nice to have" into "must have" territory for organizations. In fact, nearly six in ten AI early adopters think it will be a necessary element to remain competitive within the next few years. Two-thirds say AI is very important to their organization's strategy and success. AI can be a powerful tool for getting people the right information at the right time for decision making. By augmenting human intelligence and improving planning, AI has the potential to transform workplace productivity.

Jeopardy-winning Watson is getting better and better at designing cancer treatments. New data presented this week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting show that IBM's Watson for Oncology suggests cancer treatments that are often in-line with what physicians recommend. The company also announced that the cancer care product, designed to help physicians diagnose and treat their patients, is being used by nine new medical centers around the world. In a handful of studies being presented at ASCO, researchers show that Watson for Oncology is pretty dang good at recommending treatments for a variety of different cancers. From research done in India, Watson's treatment recommendations were in agreement with those of physicians 96 percent of the time for lung cancer, 93 percent of the time for rectal cancer, and 81 percent of the time for colon cancer.

Summary: Next time you bring up Artificial Intelligence and your non-data scientist friends all say "Watson" here's some perspective you can offer. Their understanding of AI and Watson is very likely to be inaccurate. Here's what you need to know to set them straight. When conversation with my non-data scientist friends turns to AI it's almost inevitable that at least one will remark on the wonders of Watson. To many of the uninformed, Watson is synonymous with AI and clearly it's already here.

US research firm International Data Corporation predicts that by 2020, businesses will spend over $100 billion to protect themselves from hacking, up from the estimated $74 billion budget last year. However, new technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing can reportedly help prevent cyberattacks. Artificial intelligence, for instance, could enhance threat detection, shorten defense response time, and improve ways of distinguishing real efforts from those that can be ignored, the Financial Times noted. "Before artificial intelligence, we'd have to assume that a lot of the data - say 90 percent - is fine. We only would have bandwidth to analyze this 10 percent," Daniel Driver from UK defense group's Chemring Technology Solution said. IBM is also developing its own AI security platform called Watson.