The art of making perfumes and colognes hasn't changed much since the 1880s, when synthetic ingredients began to be used. Expert fragrance creators tinker with combinations of chemicals in hopes of producing compelling new scents. So Achim Daub, an executive at one of the world's biggest makers of fragrances, Symrise, wondered what would happen if he injected artificial intelligence into the process. Would a machine suggest appealing formulas that a human might not think to try? Daub hired IBM to design a computer system that would pore over massive amounts of information--the formulas of existing fragrances, consumer data, regulatory information, on and on--and then suggest new formulations for particular markets. The system is called Philyra, after the Greek goddess of fragrance.

The art of making perfumes and colognes hasn't changed much since the 1880s, when synthetic ingredients began to be used. Expert fragrance creators tinker with combinations of chemicals in hopes of producing compelling new scents. So Achim Daub, an executive at one of the world's biggest makers of fragrances, Symrise, wondered what would happen if he injected artificial intelligence into the process. Would a machine suggest appealing formulas that a human might not think to try? Daub hired IBM to design a computer system that would pore over massive amounts of information--the formulas of existing fragrances, consumer data, regulatory information, on and on--and then suggest new formulations for particular markets. The system is called Philyra, after the Greek goddess of fragrance.

The art of making perfumes and colognes hasn't changed much since the 1880s, when synthetic ingredients began to be used. Expert fragrance creators tinker with combinations of chemicals in hopes of producing compelling new scents. So Achim Daub, an executive at one of the world's biggest makers of fragrances, Symrise, wondered what would happen if he injected artificial intelligence into the process. Would a machine suggest appealing formulas that a human might not think to try? Daub hired IBM to design a computer system that would pore over massive amounts of information--the formulas of existing fragrances, consumer data, regulatory information, on and on--and then suggest new formulations for particular markets. The system is called Philyra, after the Greek goddess of fragrance.

IBM's Watson supercomputer has beat Jeopardy champions, reconstituted recipes, and even helped create highlight reels for the World Cup. Now it's taking on a new tech challenge; changing how the construction industry operates. A new partnership between IBM and Fluor, a global engineering and construction company, will put the supercomputer's computational skills to work on making building more efficient. The new Watson-based system, in development since 2015 and now in use on select projects, will be able to analyze a job site "like a doctor diagnoses a patient," according to Leslie Lindgren, Fluor's vice president of Information Management. That degree of risk analysis, predictive logistics, and comprehension is no small challenge given the complexity of today's construction megaprojects.

Fluor will use Watson's project health diagnostics and its market dynamics/spend analytics systems, which, according to Fluor, will "transform complex data into actionable business insights". IBM Research and IBM Services worked with Fluor to identify "thousands of data points across the entire life cycle of capital projects". AI will be able to use historical trends and patterns to predict issues such as rising costs or delays. It will also be able to identify the root causes of issues and the impact of changes in the decision-making process, including estimate analysis, forecast evaluation, project risk assessment and critical path analysis. Leslie Lindgren, Fluor's vice president for IT, said: "We will be using these innovations on megaprojects to quickly discover trends, patterns and meaning in our structured and unstructured data."