One of the biggest challenges will be to advance pattern recognition and prediction. A human can easily describe what they saw happen in an event and predict what happens next, IBM says, but that's virtually "impossible" for current AI. That ability to quickly summarize and foresee events could be useful for everything from health care workers taking care of the elderly to repairing complicated machines, among other examples.

There's no guarantee that IBM and MIT will crack a problem that has daunted Google, Facebook and countless academics. However, it's rare that scientists get access to this kind of technology. You might just see breakthroughs that aren't practical for teams that have only limited use of AI-friendly hardware and code.