For Christoph Auer-Welsbach, partner, IBM Ventures, interaction between humans and machines is nothing new: "Think of chess -- here people have been playing against computers for years." He sees artificial intelligence (AI) not as a danger, but as a valuable way of rounding out human abilities. "Computers will not be superior to us," Auer-Welsbach says. In many professions, however, AI can make people's everyday work easier. Take jobs in the healthcare sector, for instance: "To stay up to date on the state of all patients or all medical developments at all times, a doctor would have to spend 160 hours a week reading. And doctors just don't have that kind of time."

Everyone wants to stay fit and healthy, and AI can help you to do that even better. While IBM Watson supports personalised apps like the Nutrino pregnancy tracker, it can also help doctors in hospitals draw more accurate conclusions. "Doctors have tens of thousands of brain scans from screening people for cancer," explains Auer-Welsbach. "If IBM Watson went through these it could perhaps recognise signs that no one has been able to know before – whether the brain looks slightly different in people who go on to develop Alzheimer's, for example." Read more: Would you trust artificial intelligence with your pregnancy? Auer-Welsbach says that its food production is also shifting to adopt new AI.