What's behind IBM's big artificial intelligence deal with Salesforce

This article originally appeared on Real Money on March 6, 2017. Given how much several tech giants throw around the terms "artificial intelligence," "machine learning" and "deep learning," it's easy to assume that they're all trying to do similar things. And in some cases, the companies are indeed using AI to tackle problems that have much in common, particularly when it comes to making sense out of real-life sounds, images and dialogue. But a closer look shows that tech giants are at times not only tackling very different challenges, but employing different AI techniques to do so. IBM (IBM), which has reportedly set a goal of obtaining $10 billion in annual revenue related to its Watson AI platform by 2023, is a particular outlier -- not seen as a leader when it comes to certain large-scale, consumer-focused AI solutions, but very much one when it comes to AI offerings that require a measure of industry-specific expertise.