IBM Watson, X Prize team up to offer a 5 million artificial intelligence challenge

IBM Watson joined forces with the X Prize Foundation to launch an open 5 million challenge to build an artificial intelligence app for healthcare that could also be used in other industries, including education, energy, the environment, global development or even exploration. "In the coming decade, as X Prize strives to achieve its impact mission through incentive competitions and crowd-sourcing, we see tremendous opportunity in this emerging generation of problem solvers to use AI to solve humanity's grandest challenges," X Prize CEO Marcus Shingles said in a statement. "The IBM Watson AI X Prize is intended to promote and progress the notion of'AI for impact' among the global bold innovator crowd, both the established community of practitioners, as well as encourage newcomers to experiment and ultimately demonstrate how AI can be used as a tool for good." Unlike previous X Prizes, including the Tricorder X Prize, in which companies are vying to develop a handheld medical scanner, and the original Ansari X Prize for suborbital flight, this contest allows the participants to define their own goals and to focus on solving different problems. "Rather than set a single, universal goal for all teams, this competition allows teams to define their own challenges and demonstrate their solutions, encouraging myriad problem-solving approaches," Amir Banifatemi, X Prize lead for the IBM Watson AI competition, said in a statement.