IBM and Xprize open 5M A.I. competition to tackle humanity's greatest challenges

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning have emerged as key tools in the armory of many major tech companies, but can it be harnessed to solve some of the world's greatest challenges? IBM and Xprize want to find out. First announced back in February, the 5 million IBM Watson AI Xprize is a competition from Xprize, an initiative launched in 1995 to help solve "the world's Grand Challenges" through incentive-based prizes. Registrations for the four-year global competition are now open, with entrants asked to show how humans and A.I. can tackle issues in education, energy and the environment, health care, exploration, and global development. Xprize has given birth to numerous notable competitions in the past, one of the most recent being the Google-sponsored Lunar Xprize that's setting out to send a private, unmanned aircraft to the moon.