Big words for IBM: during a recent interview, Rob Thomas, General Manager of IBM Data and Watson Artificial Intelligence, told VentureBeat that all the virtual agent providers other than Watson are nothing but “fireflies.” Here’s an extract: “I would distinguish [Watson Assistant] from chatbots, which are mostly rules-based engines. (…) At the core of it is a model for intent classification. So we do a really good job of understanding intent (…) There really are no big players, except for us (…) In probably half of the cases where a customer is using Watson Assistant, that customer started with some off-the-shelf chatbot, and then they see they need more (…) If you only want to serve basic tasks, like letting customers reset their passwords, you don’t need us. Any rules-based engine can do that. If you want to get to any level of interaction or decision-making or understanding [or] intent, then you’re going to need us.” In the meantime, Intel acquired Habana Labs, the startup offering computer chips to help AI production processes, for $2B. Habana Labs claims that its processors “can handle four times the amount of data per second than rival chips, a key factor for heavy A.I. training loads.”