Virginia "Ginni" Rometty is helping to reshape IBM into "the incumbent disruptor." The chairman, president and CEO is betting the 108-year-old stalwart can fit that bill by leveraging IBM Watson's artificial intelligence capabilities across many of its products including the IBM cloud, utilizing blockchain technology to better track and trace products within global supply chains, and commercializing quantum computing. It's all about truly harnessing the power of data increasingly being fed into these systems, Rometty said at IBM Think 2018 conference. "When you learn exponentially, you become the disruptor, instead of the disrupted," she said. Perhaps the Armonk, N.Y-based company's biggest bet is Watson's AI-enhanced technologies, which is being used to solve an increasingly wide range of business problems, Rometty said.

"Let's put smart to work!" That was a main theme of IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty's keynote address at the recent IBM Think conference in Las Vegas. A core message of Rometty's speech was that we are in a world that is "AI everything." There are more "Internet of Things" (IoT) enabled objects than there are people. Artificial intelligence is a powerful force in business. But some people fear it; some people don't trust it; and some people don't recognize the benefits it can give an organization.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: "Look, we really think this is about man and machine, not man vs. machine." He now runs his own firm, Evans Strategic Communications LLC.) CLOUD WARS -- As AI enters the mainstream of not only consumer consciousness but also business strategy, you could make a pretty good case that IBM and its Watson brand have been by far the primary drivers behind this profound phenomenon. Unless Watson and AI generating huge gobs of new revenue for IBM, who cares? Well, one person who cares very deeply about the rapid emergence of AI is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella--and if you're wondering about Nadella's chops in AI, consider that as he's boosted Microsoft's market cap by $250 billion during his 3-1/2 years as CEO, he's also created a global AI team of more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that any significant business--whether inside or outside the tech industry--that's not aggressively evaluating the potential impacts of AI on its customers and industry is being short-sighted at best and profoundly foolish at worst.

The conversation in the technology community about artificial intelligence was first rekindled by manufacturing giant IBM and its AI platform, Watson, CEO Ginni Rometty said on Tuesday. "We are the ones that woke up the AI world here again," Rometty told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer in a wide-ranging interview about Washington, Warren Buffett and her business. Rometty said that the key to her century-old company remaining an institution in this country is how many times it has been able to reinvent itself and follow the latest trends in tech. Today, those trends are the cloud and artificial intelligence, which IBM employees refer to as "cognitive" programming. "There's a reason we call it cognitive," Rometty told Cramer.

Under the direction of CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference is increasingly becoming San Francisco's dominant tech industry confab. Customer relationship management company Salesforce announced Monday an artificial intelligence partnership with IBM aimed at boosting the range of predictive analytics it can provide clients. Salesforce Einstein, an AI platform that debuted last year that mines data to help salespeople close leads, will combine with IBM Watson to provide data-based insights for businesses. For example, an insurance company running Salesforce could use real-time weather updates from Watson to warn customers about impending bad weather. Or Watson's retail industry data could combine with Einstein's customer-habit information to create targeted campaigns for shoppers.

Under the direction of CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference is increasingly becoming San Francisco's dominant tech industry confab. SAN FRANCISCO -- Looks like Einstein is getting a little help from Watson. Customer relationship management company Salesforce announced Monday an artificial intelligence partnership with IBM aimed at boosting the range of predictive analytics it can provide clients. Salesforce Einstein, an AI platform that debuted last year that mines data to help salespeople close leads, will combine with IBM Watson to provide data-based insights for businesses. For example, an insurance company running Salesforce could use real-time weather updates from Watson to warn customers about impending bad weather.