In July, we talked about whether the change in law should be characterized as "Disruption, Eruption or Interruption?" This week, we drill down into one likely source of change, IBM's Watson. Lawyers have been thinking for a while about whether artificial intelligence would ever start to displace or complement lawyers. Richard Susskind, the leading legal futurist/technologist, did his work in this area starting in the mid-1980s. In the August issue of the ABA Journal, one of the commenters to an article about LegalZoom feared: "Once we have fully artificial intelligence enhanced programs like LegalZoom, there will be no need for lawyers, aside from the highly specialized and expensive large-law-firm variety."

The American Diabetes Association and IBM Watson Health will partner on a long-term collaboration to bring together the cognitive computing power of Watson and the ADA's vast clinical and research data. Kevin L. Hagen, ADA CEO, said the ADA and IBM Watson Health will work to build a first-of-its-kind diabetes advisor for patients and caregivers, as well as develop Watson-powered solutions to optimize clinical, research and lifestyle decisions. "The goal of this endeavor is to develop and introduce cognitive technologies that support clinicians, researchers and people living with diabetes so that we can accelerate discoveries, personalize treatment and care, and improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes," Hagen said while announcing the partnership. "We also see potential to address social determinants of health." Unlike traditional computing systems that are programmed, systems like IBM Watson learn at scale, explained IBM General Manager David Kenny.

HPE has maintained an aggressive stance on the company's proposed future in machine learning and AI at this week's Discover 2016 conference in Las Vegas.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is a company in transition. On the one hand, there are reorganizations and layoffs as the blue giant is transforming itself into a cloud-services company. On the other hand, there are flagship research projects such as Watson or the Quantum Experience as a foreshadowing of things to come in the next few years. I recently had the opportunity to ask IBM some questions about these projects and other things on my mind. This article contains said questions and IBM's answers.

IBM's (NYSE:IBM) famed Watson artificial intelligence platform will be put to use to help match cancer patients with clinical trials. The Armonk, N.Y.-based technology giant said Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Network will adopt the Watson technology for this purpose in a project set to begin this fall. Froedtert/MCW Cancer Network are among the 1st cancer programs nationally to use the technology, according to IBM. Doctors typically try to match patients to genetically ideal clinical trials that are also the most relevant in the development spectrum. This can be a long process on multiple levels, involving reviews by clinical coordinators who manually sort through patient records and conditions.

Hi! I'm working on a character-level LSTM right now for learning purposes; I've written my code to handle batches of data but for now I've trained my LSTM by just reading in one stream of input as with karpathy's mini char-rnn. The more I read, the more I feel that I should do a batched approach rather than one stream of character inputs. Only problem is, I guess I don't entirely understand how to train it in a batched form. Suppose I have 10,000 quotes (for train, not validation) of maximum 150 characters and batch_size 25. Is the idea that I train my RNN the same way but send in as my input matrix of these 150 characters at 25 quotes a piece?

Today we're excited to announce that Grain is powered by IBM Watson, unlocking a new way to connect your personal world to the world of investing. Our iOS app, where you can invest alongside friends and family, now runs on one of the most powerful cognitive engines in the world. It's a different kind of tool for a new era of computing, where people and computers work together instead of at ends. It's illumination of an aspect of life that was formerly dark. It's a way for you to take control, to build a portfolio as unique as you are.

IBM-owned The Weather Company is launching Watson Ads, a new ad tech solution that utilises machine learning to give consumers an ability to interact with digital advertising. In what the vendor claims is the first consumer use of its cognitive computing technology for advertising purposes, Watson Ads will allow advertisers to produce display ads that invite consumers to interact through voice and text with a product or service offering. The Weather Company has confirmed three brands - Campbell Soup Company, Unilever and GSK Consumer Healthcare – will be the first to take up the new ad solution when it launches later this year. As an example, the media company said a consumer could ask through natural voice recognition what they should make for dinner that night. Watson will then provide a data-driven response using a combination of machine learning and reasoning ability from datasets ingested by the system.

After robots flood the work market, the only jobs left for real people will be those that require critical thinking and human-level care. Something like a teacher at a college, that could definitely never be outsourced to an machine, right? Ashok Goel, a professor in computing at Georgia Tech, implemented an artificial intelligence teaching assistant in the online Q&A forums for one of his courses last semester. Young academics busting their backs in hopes of one day snagging a TA job will be alarmed to learn that the A.I, named Jill, performed so well that most of the course's students couldn't tell her from the other eight human TAs who were performing the same duties. The A.I.'s full name was Jill Watson, built from the same IBM Watson platform that beat humans in Jeopardy!

You would be amazed about how many requests are made for a banner on a website. All kinds of tracking services are called along with the actual banner content. Now another request will increase load time. The Weather Company, an IBM Business is announcing Watson Ads, an industry-first capability in which consumers will be able to interact with IBM Watson through advertising, by being able to ask questions via voice or text and receive relevant information about the product or offering. Marketers have long sought an advertising solution that can create a one-to-one connection with the consumer, that can be personal, relevant and valuable; and can scale across millions of interactions and touchpoints. Watson Ads will help marketers achieve those goals, and can also help them uncover consumer and product insights faster than ever before, revealing connections previously invisible to human data scientists.