X Prize – Page 3 – Cosmic Log

Image: IBM Watson — IBM’s Watson AI software is best-known for winning at “Jeopardy!” in 2011. (Credit: IBM)

The latest multimillion-dollar tech challenge – known as the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE – will be aimed at encouraging collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence software to solve the world’s big problems. But it’s not yet clear who will sign up for the $5 million competition, in part because IBM’s Watson program is already one of the contestants in a much bigger, multibillion-dollar AI race.

The Feb. 17 announcement, made at the TED2016 conference in Vancouver, B.C., adds artificial intelligence to an XPRIZE list that also spotlights ocean discovery, moon exploration, carbon recycling, medical diagnostic devices, educational software and much, much more.

“Our hope is that the teams will show how we can apply AI to the world’s great challenges,” Stephanie Wander, who’s on the prize development team for California-based XPRIZE, told GeekWire. “That would be the cat’s meow.”

A lot of the details surrounding the competition still have to be worked out. The complete rules and guidelines are to be made available in mid-May, just before IBM’s World of Watson conference. Teams can already pre-register.

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$7 million contest boosts ocean discovery

Image: Submersible — An artist’s conception shows a submersible vehicle mapping the ocean depths. (Credit: XPRIZE)

The latest high-tech competition from XPRIZE is offering $7 million to promote new ways to map our planet’s final frontier: the depths of the ocean.

“Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet’s surface and are a crucial global source of food, energy, economic security, and even the air we breathe, yet 95 percent of the deep sea remains a mystery to us,” Peter Diamandis, XPRIZE chairman and CEO, said in a news release. “In fact, we have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of our own seafloor.”

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is meant to accelerate innovation in deep-sea mapping. Diamandis unveiled the three-year competition today during the American Geophysical Society’s fall meeting in San Francisco. He was joined on stage by representatives of the contest’s sponsors, Shell and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The teams that enter the contest will have to complete a series of tasks, including making a map of the seafloor, producing high-resolution images of a specific object, and identifying archaeological, biological or geological features. The technologies have to work at depths of up to 4,000 meters (2.5 miles).

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