[DemonRaven]

http://www.fastcompany.com/3054660/elasticity/ibm-opens-its-artificial-mind-to-the-world

Artificial intelligence is the big, oft-misconstrued catchphrase of the day, making headlines recently with the launch of the new OpenAI organization, backed by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech luminaries. AI is neither a synonym for killer robots nor a technology of the future, but one that is already finding new signals in the vast noise of collected data, ranging from weather reports to social media chatter to temperature sensor readings. Today IBM has opened up new access to its AI system, called Watson, with a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow other companies and organizations to feed their data into IBM's big brain for analysis.

First it was google with tensorflow, then facebook and now IBM, At first glace it almost seems counter productive to give away technology by business's until you stop to actually think about what they are gaining from it. What do they have to gain? Free help in the form of developers. Ideas and programming by others that they can in turn use for their own profit.  Yes this seems kind of a cynical view point but lets face it most humans are not completely altruistic.

Other companies have already been doing it. Take second life for example. It's members create all the stuff you find on it for what amounts to slave labor. The developers get very little return for the vast amount of work they do. In turn other members buy sl's virtual currency giving them a profit. Who is the real winner? Second life of course.

This is no different. All three are doing the exact same thing.

[Art]

It is said that "There's no such thing as a Free Lunch!"

Correct!

Someone, somewhere is paying for it in one manner or another.

[8pla.net]

Nice business plan.