This Jan. 13, 2011 file photo provided by IBM shows the IBM computer system known as Watson at IBM's T.J. Watson research center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Supercomputers have won “Jeopardy!,” beat a world champion in chess and will teach you how to cook. And now, the technology is being harnessed to streamline the United States Air Force acquisitions process — an effort that will be undertaken by a small Lawrence business.

Lawrence-based KalScott Engineering Inc. announced Wednesday it was selected to finish building artificial intelligence, called SOPHIA, for the Air Force.

KalScott, owned by two Kansas University graduates, was chosen last summer to do some preliminary work training a supercomputer — or “cognitive thinking machine” — that could understand Defense Department contracting rules and answer questions about them audibly. Suman Saripalli, a co-owner of KalScott, said Wednesday the firm received the final go-ahead to complete the work. The announcement came with $750,000 more in funding.

The finished product — which will act as a “very intelligent assistant,” Saripalli said — is intended to help businesses and government employees navigate the Air Force’s complex procurement process, which has been found to discourage small and innovative businesses from partnering with the federal government. With more businesses participating in the process, it would make contracts — and prices — more competitive, the Air Force has said in a news release about the project.

Saripalli said SOPHIA would reduce the “overall cost to the taxpayer” and accelerate how innovative and technologically advanced federal agencies become.

KalScott will develop and test SOPHIA this year and through 2017.

After it received an initial $150,000 to begin the work last summer, KalScott gained national attention through Air Force Times, Fortune and the Washington Post.

Since last summer, KalScott has been shoveling tens of thousands of pages of contracts and contract regulations into IBM’s Watson. Watson, a cognitive tool, has the capability to gain an understanding of nuances, something that will be needed in answering questions about Air Force acquisitions, Saripalli has said.

SOPHIA will have the ability to engage in a back-and-forth with businesses applying for defense contracts, as well as government employees who work in procurement. It will answer in a natural language, similar to knowledge navigators such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa.

Saripalli and co-owner Tom Sherwood have previously been selected for jobs with NASA and the Navy to develop drones. They’re applying the same type of artificial intelligence they used in the unmanned air vehicles to train the supercomputer.