Students taking an online course at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing were duped into thinking one of their teaching assistants, named Jill Watson, was an actual human. And how can you blame them—the virtual TA managed to answer many of their questions with 97 percent certainty.

Next time you check in at a Hilton, your welcome may be even more automated than usual. That’s because the hotel chain has been working with IBM to create a robotic concierge that it call Connie.

Pepper is super cute and remarkably well-mannered... for now. But that IBM just announced that the talking, emotion-reading robot will interface with Watson, lil Pep could turn into a smiling, evil robotic mastermind; adorable leader of the human-enslaving resistance.

Rather than relying on carpet-bombing approaches like chemotherapy and radiation treatments, cutting-edge cancer cures are looking more towards a surgical strike, tailored to shutting down the mutations that are driving growth. And the secret weapon in that fight might just be a well-known Jeopardy contestant.

Look at this little dinosaur toy. Is he cute? Yes. Fun? Definitely. The possible harbinger of humanity's demise? Possibly. That's because CogniToys aren't not normal toys. Green Dino here is powered by IBM's Watson supercomputer, which lets it learn and adapt to your child over time, kind of like a self-aware Furby.

You probably know IBM's Watson platform best from its winning performance on Jeopardy. But the supercomputer is more than just a mechanism for IBM to publicly shame smart people. It's arguably the most powerful natural-language supercomputer in the world, and thanks to a new public beta, its number-crunching abilities…

If you're one of those people who believe the singularity is imminent, you might want to pack a lunch. Our machines just aren't that smart, says Alva Noë, a philosopher at the University of California at Berkeley. What we call artificial intelligence is actually best described as pseudo-intelligence.

IBM wants its supercomputer Watson to help you get healthy—by analyzing your genes. A startup called Pathway Genomics is teaming up with IBM to create a fitness and diet tracking app that uses DNA sequencing and Watson's intelligence to give custom health recommendations.

The USAA has announced that it's recruiting IBM's Watson for its first-ever consumer-facing application—and it'll help military members transition back into civilian life.

Since defeating the world's greatest Jeopardy players, IBM's Watson has been busy at work in the healthcare industry. But now, the artificially intelligent computer has undergone a fairly substantive upgrade — one that enables it not just to extract information, but to "understand" and reason from it as well.

No longer content with dominating at Jeopardy and serving up gourmet fusion dishes from food trucks, IBM's Watson will soon commit its supercomputer powers to fighting cancer. The goal: See whether Watson can use patient's genomic data to recommend treatments for glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.

It's a while since IBM's Watson was put to work inventing recipes, but now the fruits of its labors are being cooked up and served out of IBM's new food truck. And the results are... interesting.

IBM just put the pedal to the metal on Watson's crawl towards relevance. The company just announced a $1 billion investment, giving the supercomputer its own business division as well as an office in New York City's Astor Place.

Watson was always going to be more than just a successful game show contestant. Now, the computer is about to take on anything and everything, as it opens itself up to the public on the cloud.

As part of what we can only assume is preparation for some very intense mad scientist Halloween costumes, IBM has announced a prototype computer that is both powered and cooled by an electrolyte liquid.