Aaron Reich, senior director of technology innovation at Avanade, told iTWire in an interview that what was powerful about AI and its cognitive computing capability was that it was more than just direct language translation. "Machines today can understand intent and nuances, making translation much more natural than in the past," he said. "However, it's not just about the tool; it's also about how it is embedded in an organisation's culture." Reich (below) is part of the innovation and incubation team at Avanade, a global professional services company providing IT consulting and services focused on the Microsoft platform. For the past few years he has been responsible for growth of Avanade's Windows Azure business.

Watch out Tesla and Google: the race for whom will build the car of the future is still far from over. German automakers are working hard to stay ahead of the pack and add new capabilities to their reliable, if sometimes unexciting, vehicles. Back in September BMW, Audi and Mercedes announced the launch of a project aimed at helping vehicles communicate with each other and help the driver gain a better understanding of traffic conditions. The BMW i8 is presented on the first day of the press days of Paris motor Show, on September 29, 2016. Today, BMW unveils yet another agreement, a partnership with American giant IBM.

Open-source auto company Local Motors is constantly redefining itself. The company began with the Rally Fighter, whose designs were crowdsourced from the Local Motors community. The firm then jumped into the 3D printing industry, first 3D printing the Strati concept vehicle and then embarking on a complete line of 3D-printed road-ready cars, set to hit highways in 2017. At the grand opening of the company's new facility in National Harbor, MD, Local Motors redefined itself once again by unveiling "Olli", the first self-driving vehicle powered by IBM Watson. Watson will allow the auto to take advantage of a number of advanced cognitive computing capabilities, including the ability to answer questions from the vehicle's passengers.

Berlin - 03 Sep 2016: at IFA Berlin – one of the world's leading trade shows for consumer electronics – IBM (NYSE: IBM) was joined by some of the biggest names in the industry to highlight how Watson IoT technologies are poised to drive a new wave of innovation in the home and play a key role in one of the biggest technological transformations in the history of the world. According to Harriet Green, Global Head of IBM Watson IoT: "millions of sensors are giving appliances and devices eyes and ears, increasing their inbuilt intelligence and enabling them to interact with us better." "The challenge is that over next few years, the Internet of Things will become the biggest source of data on the planet. That's where IBM's Watson cognitive computing system comes in. Watson uses machine learning and other techniques to understand this data and turn it into insight, which can help automate tasks, enable manufacturers to design better products, innovate new services and enhance our overall quality of life – especially in the home. And with cognitive technologies, interactions with'things' through natural language and voice commands will dramatically improve," added Green during her keynote at IFA. Examples of companies tapping IBM's Watson IoT platform include: Whirlpool is using Watson technologies to help deliver superior customer service and enhance people's lives at home by enabling its home appliances to connect with and interact with one another and their users.

National Harbor, MD - 16 Jun 2016: Local Motors, the leading vehicle technology integrator and creator of the world's first 3D-printed cars, today introduced the first self-driving vehicle to integrate the advanced cognitive computing capabilities of IBM (NYSE: IBM) Watson. Starting today, Olli will be used on public roads locally in DC, and late in 2016 in Miami-Dade County and Las Vegas. "Olli offers a smart, safe and sustainable transportation solution that is long overdue," Rogers said. "Olli with Watson acts as our entry into the world of self-driving vehicles, something we've been quietly working on with our co-creative community for the past year. We are now ready to accelerate the adoption of this technology and apply it to nearly every vehicle in our current portfolio and those in the very near future. I'm thrilled to see what our open community will do with the latest in advanced vehicle technology."

After close to twenty years at IBM, where he began as an IBM Fellow and Chief Architect for the SOA Foundation, Rob High has developed a number of core technologies that back Big Blue's enterprise systems, including the suite of tools behind IBM WebSphere, and more recently, those that support the wide-ranging ambitions of the Watson cognitive computing platform. Although High gave the second day keynote this afternoon at the GPU Technology Conference, there was no mention of accelerated computing. Interestingly, while the talk was about software, specifically the machine learning behind Watson, there was also very little about the software underpinnings. Disappointing as this might have been for the hardware-oriented folks in the crowd hoping to understand how OpenPower Foundation-spurred efforts using GPU-backed, Power-based systems make Watson's gears turn (we can fairly assume that is the case), High did provide a summary of Watson's evolution since 2011 as well as a look ahead at what the Watson research teams are looking to next. High says he is frequently asked what about the differences between AI and cognitive computing, noting that while they aren't much different conceptually, the goal of the Watson team is far more about making humans better at what they do than recreating the human brain in machine form.