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If you pick up your iPhone and ask Apple's personal assistant software the age of Mets third baseman David Wright, you get a direct answer: Wright, born in 1982, is 34 years old. You also get some ancillary information: A photo, his height, a nickname that no one uses. Ask Google's artificially intelligent question-answering system, same deal. But until Monday evening if you were to ask the same question of Alexa, the Amazon system that powers the company's Echo devices, you got a much different response. David Wright, according to Alexa/Echo, is 234 years old -- by far the oldest person on the Mets roster or in professional baseball or in the recorded history of the human race. Wright may be injured a lot, but that's only because he's older than the Constitution of the United States.

Anne Le Grand, general manager of Watson Health Imaging, will explore the potential of cognitive imaging to aid radiologists in delivering high-quality, patient-centered care as this year's Radiology Leadership Institute (RLI) Summit keynote speaker. Besides cognitive imaging -- using computers to develop clinical insights from medical images -- Le Grand will also address using augmented intelligence -- as opposed to artificial intelligence -- as IBM trains Watson to "see" medical images. Her address, "Watson Health: Empowering Heroes, Transforming Health," will be presented Sept. 7. Registration is open for the annual meeting, which will be held Sept. 7–10 at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. "Radiology and radiologists lead in the development and implementation of both imaging and minimally invasive procedures, driven not only by technology but also by societal needs," said Alexander M. Norbash, MD, FACR, the RLI Summit program chair. "RLI Summit attendees will be able to hear how cognitive imaging and augmented intelligence may make radiologists' work even more effective, efficient and well-informed when looking at enormous amounts of information pertinent to patients," he noted.

IBM is integrating its Watson machine learning software into its enterprise helpdesk software in order to help organisations automate at least part of their employee query and tech support functions. Watson, which is being put to use in a whole range of different scenarios, including creating highlight reels at the Masters golf tournament, can learn over time, IBM claims, basing its knowledge on its historic interactions with staff. "Today, governments and enterprises need to provide an effective set of capabilities to their workforce, so that their employees can deliver a superior interaction and experience for their citizens and consumers," said Richard Esposito, general manager, GTS Mobility Services at IBM. "We need a system that can understand and communicate in a natural language conversation, one that solves problems and continues to learn while engaging with employees. Our Workplace Support Services with Watson delivers this value," Esposito added. The end result of this is a 24/7 support desk for workforces where the answers to common questions are continually refined, with Watson making suggestions for better resolutions of specific issues as it gathers more data.

IBM has been the digital overseer for the Master's golf tournament for more than two decades. In recent years, the technology contributions have evolved from website basics to apps and other digital experiences, and now Watson is being added into the mix. For the first time at a sporting event, IBM is harnessing Watson's ability to see, hear and learn to identify great shots at the Masters, based on crowd noise, player gestures, and other indicators, to aid in the creation of highlight reels. "This year, they really wanted to take the Masters' digital projects to a new level, so we began thinking about how we can have an immersive video experience and what would make that space even more impressive," said John Kent, program manager for IBM's worldwide sports and entertainment partnership group. "That's how Watson became involved." The technology behind the latest functionality is IBM's new Cognitive Highlights application, which uses Watson to automatically sort through live video streams to pinpoint moments worthy of a replay.

If your company uses IBM's helpdesk services, don't be surprised if you find yourself talking to Watson next time you contact the IT department. IBM has added a Watson-powered concierge-like service to its helpdesk, and it can quickly solve your IT issues around the clock, wherever you are in the world and whatever device you're using. Unlike automated bots, you can talk to Watson about your issues like you're talking to another person. It can then customize its responses -- for instance, it can use layman's terms if you're not that tech-savvy or use jargons if you are. It'll solve your problem on the spot if it's something simple like adding storage to an email account, resetting a password or ordering a new company phone or computer. If it's not trained to handle your problem, it'll hand you over to a human IT personnel.

It isn't easy to capture the best shots in a golf tournament that is being televised. And that's why IBM is applying the artificial intelligence of its Watson platform to the task of identifying the best shots at The Masters golf tournament. For the first time at a sporting event, IBM is harnessing Watson's ability to see, hear, and learn to identify great shots based on crowd noise, player gestures, and other indicators. IBM Watson will create its own highlight reels. With 90 golfers playing multiple rounds over four days, video from every tee, every hole, and multiple camera angles can quickly add up to thousands of hours of footage.

With the explosion of technology in the digital space, customer expectations and website capabilities are constantly changing. As we approach the middle part of 2017, now is a good time to closely examine trends that will have the greatest impact on the industry this year. There are now more than a billion websites available, and the amount of data online has exploded from 130 exabytes in 2005 to an anticipated 40,000 in 2020. In response to the incredible amount of information available online, brands now compete with each other to provide customers relevant content. This has driven industry advancements and led to greater customer expectations from brands and their associated websites.

IBM's Watson is simply a question answering system. As its creators claim, it can understand, reason, learn and interact by incorporating machine learning techniques, natural language processing and automated reasoning. Right now, its achievements may seem ordinary, however, when it first came into existence around 10 years ago, they were simply astonishing. Since Watson can analyse large amounts of data, it can detect anomalies invisible to the human eye. What is more, it has been built in such a way to understand questions asked in natural language and give simple, yet detailed answers.

As an H&R Block tax pro and Enrolled Agent, I've seen just about everything that you can see in the tax world. From someone who tried to claim a cruise as a tax deduction and someone else who wanted to deduct their expenses from playing in a Fantasy Football League. Tax preparation sometimes gets a bad rap. People never seem to think of it as the most exciting career, as a job where you can be creative and use new technology to upend old ways of doing things. But that has never been my experience, and it will definitely not be my experience next week, when I get to see another first in the tax world: For the first time, I'll be working with a cognitive system to help customers "get their taxes won."