X Prize and IBM Announce $5 Million Artificial Intelligence Competition

The X Prize Foundation and IBM have just announced a global X Prize competition focusing on artificial intelligence. Teams will take part in the "IBM Watson A.I. X Prize: A Cognitive Computing Competition" in hopes of taking home the $5 million prize. Registration will open at the end of May, and the competition will end at the end of the 2020 TED conference.

Re:

[Marginal Coward]

Now, if only there was a catchy shorter version of the name.

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

how will they know

[turkeydance]

that it's artificial and/or intelligent?

Re:

[Maritz]

Ethics. Video game journalism. Fuck, you lot are boring.

A competition to harm humanity the most.

[sethstorm]

Given AI's ability to cause long-lasting harm (destruction speed > creation speed) across a multitude of professions, this might not exactly be the best thing for humanity.

Re:

[Maritz]

Humanity is a slowly-unfolding disaster. I wouldn't stress too much about somebody smarter showing up. Might give us that slice of perspective we're perpetually missing.

Winning conditions undefined

[braindrainbahrain]

The competition rules are beyond ambiguous, arbitrary, and subjective. According to the TFA, "...in past competitions, the X Prize Foundation typically laid out specific goals or requirements that had to be met. That's not the case this time around, because X Prize is allowing teams to define their own challenges." AI has plenty of competitions, some more or less formal (Turing test) and some informal (bragging rights for winning Jeopardy or a Go grand master), but this competition is meaningless.