I must have missed something since the title of the linked IEEE Spectrum article calls out MIT and IBM yet the text of the article says nothing about either. The only source mentioned is the lead researcher who's from Georgia Inst of Tech.
If you look at the paper[1] the authors are 1 from Georgia tech, 1 from IBM
"Watson", one from IBM Watson and MIT and 1 from MIT.
At this point, publishing a paper is just another college level assignment... for MIT students. Everyone there wants that named accomplishment, and students are just trying to hack their way into it.