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IBM has encouraged developers to use Watson AI system for building apps with the hope of making the system more successful in the future. In a latest bid to make the system more popular, the tech firm pledged $5M in grant for the biggest breakthroughs using the Watson System by 2020.

Peter Diamandis, founder of X Prize and partner of IBM on this project, announced at TED conference in Vancouver on Wednesday. "I'm sick and tired of the dystopian vision of artificial intelligence," Diamandis said. "AI is one of the most important inventions we will create to solve humanity's grand challenges, to understand the potential the future provides for us."

As per IBM, the contest will be open to teams from all over the world. The teams would have to come up with interesting ideas that will allow people to use powerful cognitive AI technologies to solve the toughest challenges. The teams have the freedom to "effectively call their own shots, and then come up and demonstrate what they've done," Diamandis said.

IBM is funding this project and the teams starting this year will exhibit their concept at the World of Watson Conference. The winners of this year's challenge will proceeded over to the next year's battle after they are assessed by "a panel of expert judges for technical validity and the audacity of their mission."

According to IBM, the prize money of $4.5M will be split amongst top three teams so each team will get a maximum of $1.5 Million. The remaining $500,000 will be pegged towards the completion of the project until it reaches the deadline.

Watson began as a huge server system but is now a cloud distributed system. Although the Watson is already being used by many companies, IBM is hoping to make a bigger breakthrough with the help of this contest, as reported by ValueWalk