IBM dangles $5 million prize for major breakthroughs using Watson

IBM has been encouraging developers to build apps using its Watson artificial intelligence system, which it hopes will be a big moneymaker for the company in the future. On Wednesday it kicked off its latest push, pledging US$5 million in prizes for whoever makes the biggest breakthroughs using Watson by 2020. "We're inviting teams from around the world to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful cognitive A.I. technologies capable of solving some of the world's grand challenges," the company said. And by grand challenges, it's thinking big -- it lists past achievements like the moon landing, mapping the human genome, and addressing climate change. The contest is being launched Wednesday at the TED conference in Vancouver by Peter Diamandis, founder of XPrize, which is partnering with IBM on the project.