Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence team is making history. Its AlphaGo program is up 2-0 on Lee Sedol, one of the top Go players alive. This is the first time a computer has beat a human champion without a handicap. While there will be three more games between Sedol and AlphaGo, the victory suggests that Go is the latest game that computers are outwitting people in. Checkers fell in 1994, Chess in 1997, and Jeopardy in 2011. "It there's a social component with players playing together, it's not clear," Littman says.

Until recently, Robyn Ewing was a writer in Hollywood, developing TV scripts and pitching pilots to film studios. Now she's applying her creative talents towards building the personality of a different type of character – a virtual assistant, animated by artifical intelligence (AI), that interacts with sick patients. Ewing works with engineers on the software program, called Sophie, which can be downloaded to a smartphone. The virtual nurse gently reminds users to check their medication, asks them how they are feeling or if they are in pain, and sends data to a real doctor. As tech behemoths and a wave of start-ups double down on virtual assistants that can chat with human beings, writing for AI is becoming a hot job in Silicon Valley.

In the visual and aural realms, we very often interact with reproduced versions of an original -- a photograph of a scene, a recording of a concert. And as long as you know what the original looked and/or sounded like, it's easy to tell whether it's an accurate reproduction. For smells, the same does not hold true. Unlike audio or visual reproductions, it's hard to transmit a reproduction of a smell to someone. There have been a few attempts, of course, but while something visual can be mimicked using wavelength and luminance and sound is a matter of copying the tone, odors depend on the brain's perception of molecules.

Fifth time's the charm: SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on its droneship out in the Atlantic Ocean, the first time in history such a landing has ever been achieved. All four previous instances of this landing ended in failure. SpaceX hopes to use this type of rocket landing to be able to re-use the first stage of its rockets and dramatically cut the cost of space travel going forward. This landing is a huge step towards that goal, and came during an especially pivotal launch for SpaceX: SpaceX's first cargo re-supply mission to the International Space Station since a Falcon 9 exploded in mid-flight in the summer of 2015, thwarting that particular re-supply attempt. On this mission, SpaceX's uncrewed Dragon capsule -- which sits atop the Falcon 9 rocket and detaches to fly onward to the space station -- was also carrying some really exciting cargo: the first-ever inflatable space habitat designed for the space station, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).

The computer screen in an autonomous prototype Continental Chrysler 300C sedan, seen during an event featuring numerous self-driving cars on Capitol Hill, March 15, 2016. WASHINGTON -- Self-driving cars are more likely to hurt than help public safety because of unsolved technical issues, engineers and safety advocates told the government Friday, countering a push by innovators to speed government approval. Even a trade association for automakers cautioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at a public meeting that a slower, more deliberative approach may be needed than the agency's plan to provide its guidance for deploying the vehicles in just six months. There are risks to deviating from the government's traditional process of issuing regulations and standards, Paul Scullion, safety manager at the Association of Global Automakers, told a public meeting on self-driving cars hosted by NHTSA. Issuing new regulations takes an average of eight years, NHTSA has said.

It is the first company--the first anybody to send a rocket to space and then land it on a floating barge. Sixth time is the charm, apparently. Or at least, anyone with an interest in low cost access to space hopes it will. At 4:43pm ET, the nine engines on board the Falcon 9's stage 1 rocket began pushing 1.53 million pounds of thrust against Earth. After about two and a half minutes, and several hundred thousand feet of elevation gain, the first stage detached and began a controlled fall back to Earth, arcing towards the football field-sized barge (charmingly-named "Of Course I Still Love You") in the Atlantic Ocean.

A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, carrying more supplies to the International Space Station. SpaceX was able to land its rocket on a barge April 8, 2016, about 200 miles off the shore of Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Photo: SpaceX) CAPE CANAVERAL -- The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket almost hit the bull's eye Friday, landing on a barge about 200 miles offshore. Though not exactly in the center of the platform, the maneuver was enough to keep the equipment from getting wet in the Atlantic Ocean. The experiment was the first successful landing. The booster possibly could have returned to land, like one did in December, SpaceX said.

A designer in Hong Kong made a robot in the form of actress Scarlett Johansson, and Margot E. Kaminski sees a host of interesting legal and ethical issues emerging from its creepy-beautiful self. To start with, who has the right to make a robot in the shape of an existing person? Is this a protected form of expression? "What if instead of making the Scarlett Johansson robot without the actress's permission," Kaminski asks, "a robot manufacturer legally licensed her face and trotted out millions upon millions of ScarJos to serve as personal assistants?"

It is exactly the latter question that usually causes the whole grand edifice of digital immortality and consciousness upload to fail. The big idea that what we perceive is not real and that all is pure mind was articulated by Plato in the 5th century BC. He described humanity living in chains inside a cave, and able to seeing only shadows on the walls of the cave that we mistake for reality. Plato suggested that only by "awakening" could someone discover the truth, and break free of the illusionary cave. Plato's ideas have informed much of Christian theology.

The team of three so-called "suit wranglers" told me to relax as they strapped me into the contraption, but the heart rate monitor attached to my finger gave away the fact that I was a little uncertain as to what I had gotten myself into last week. "Do you normally have a high heart rate?" one technician inquired. During a visit to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City last Thursday, I had happened across a preview of a new exhibit that was opening to the public the next day, Friday, April 1. The exhibit, The Genworth R70i Aging Experience, featured the just-unveiled Genworth R70i Age Suit – an augmented reality suit that simulates the sensory impairments that come as people age. The high-tech suit I was being strapped into was created by Applied Minds co-founder and inventor Bran Ferren, who partnered with Genworth Financial to create it with the goal of sparking a conversation among young people about aging and senior care.