Not too long ago, IBM Watson served as the inspirational muse for Grammy-nominated producer Alex Da Kid to help him write the hit song, "Not Easy." Watson's machine-learning power has been used in high-profile creative initiatives for fashion, music, and film. But what if you could "teach" Watson to think and create like a great artist? To test this theory, IBM Watson has been taught how to think like the famous Catalan modernist artist, Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí's work was influenced by his passions in life: architecture, nature, and religion.

Influencer marketing is arguably the most sought after form of marketing that exists today. If you're a brand marketer who is looking to quickly spread a message about your brand and start a viral conversation, there is no better way to do it than through influencer marketing. Though this form of social marketing is relatively new, the way that it's been done, until recently, has been highly inefficient. AI, or cognitive computing, has a crucial role to play here. When influencer marketing burst onto the scene a few years back, it caught the attention of talent agencies, as well as upstart influencer agencies, that looked to wrangle up the most impressive stable of influencer talent that they could.

When citizens want to know when to put out recycling or alternate-side parking information, they often turn to their city's 311 information systems for help, making a phone call or searching the web for answers. For more complicated questions, many cities unfortunately still rely on systems that are antiquated and pieced together. But recently, the city of Surrey, British Columbia, made their 311 services a whole lot easier when they turned to artificial intelligence solutions. Launched in 2015, the mobile app helps citizens access information that was traditionally dispensed by a call center or websites. With their My Surrey app (nicknamed "Siri for Cities")– a mobile, cognitive computing application powered by IBM Watson -- the city can quickly answer citizens' frequently asked questions and reduce the cost of providing that service.

Have you ever wanted to bottle-up and save that feeling when you have had a great vacation? Now, that joyful excitement of travel can be bottled in'Holiday Spirit' -- a new rum that's crafted using artificial intelligence. According to Joe Harrod -- a big data analyst and Artificial Intelligence expert -- Virgin Holidays used IBM Watson's linguistic AI to interpret millions of social media posts to pick out key emotions associated with holidays. IBM Watson then analyzed thousands of rum reviews to uncover which ingredients elicit different emotions and sensations in reviewers. The second data set analyzed the language and tone of 5,000 rum reviews and tasting notes found online.

Throughout history, whenever a new technology emerged, the fear that people would be replaced by that technology became a concern. Now the fear is artificial intelligence (AI) will replace humans in the workplace, with everything from warehouse robots to self-driving cabs. "Advances in artificial intelligence will lead to job losses, but new forms of employment will take their place," said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty on a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland. Fears over the impact of AI were a central theme of the panel, run by Vista Equity Partners founder Robert F. Smith. In addition to Ms. Rometty, the panel featured Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito and HealthTap CEO Ron Gutman.

Helping employees find the right information when they need it represents a major challenge for businesses. An information worker spends two hours a day just searching for information. Aside from the obvious potential frustration for the employee, there's also real business value at stake here: a recent study finds that employees could be up to 30% more efficient if they were armed with the knowledge needed to get the job done. Cognitive computing has the potential to make real impact here, say Carla O'Dell and Lauren Trees in an article in KM World: They point out that industries as diverse as healthcare, software, financial services and oil and gas exploration are already starting to see results from turning to cognitive technologies. Being able to process massive amounts of data, both structured and unstructured, to provide "personalized, intuitive responses" offers significant promise for the field of knowledge management.

From winning Jeopardy in 2011 to helping write a sad song last year, IBM's Watson cognitive computing platform is all over popular culture. Press releases fly out about Watson producing a movie trailer, powering a Macy's shopping app, even controlling lights on an internet-connected dress -- along with more serious applications like working on cancer treatments. It seems, from IBM's hype, that Watson can do everything. But Bernie Meyerson, IBM's chief innovation officer, wants to dial back the hype in some ways, calling Watson "just the first step on a very, very long road." Watson can be helpful in a lot of industries, such as medicine, which are awash in data, but it can't replace people, he says.

If you indulge in the occasional television crime drama like most of us do, you've no doubt seen some high-tech investigative tools in action. Incredibly sophisticated video facial recognition is one that's commonly featured: Investigators watch live, grainy security footage, zoom in on a suspect's face, instantly snap it into high-resolution and immediately match the face to a criminal's photo in a massive database. But is that super-advanced level of technology realistic? While real-time video facial recognition remains in its infancy, the development of deep learning techniques -- part of the machine learning family -- is advancing the technology at a rapid pace. Deep learning has also fueled advances in a host of other artificial intelligence and cognitive computing applications for intelligence agencies.

Cognitive and AI capabilities promise to transform organizations, but adopting this new technology can seem daunting -- even for sophisticated IT users. However, according to a new IBM report on decoding cognitive business, cognitive pioneers say adoption doesn't have to be overwhelming. These organizations already apply cognitive technology to accomplish targeted business goals -- from evolving customer acquisition to personalizing health programs to reinventing risk management. IBM research shows that 65 percent of early adopters believe cognitive adoption is very important to their strategy and success, and more than half regard it as a must-have to remain competitive. How do pioneers seize the cognitive advantage?

Even though India's growth rate has dropped in recent years, it still remains the fastest growing economy in the world. With this comes rapid social change sweeping through cities across the country and into the hearts of India's cities and villages. Earlier this year, a course at the Garwood Center for Innovation at University of California, Berkeley looked at this problem head-on. Students from business and engineering backgrounds spent the Fall 2015 semester looking at the problem and working in teams to propose solutions to specific problems such as transportation, healthcare, education and security. The adViz team picked security as their area of focus.