Artificial intelligence made short work of Go, a 3,000-year-old Chinese board game with more possible moves than atoms in the observable universe, so how it will fare taking on a video game classic like Doom? AI researchers are going to find out, and have announced a new challenge looking for computers that know how to handle a rocket launcher, with the best bots set to duke it out in a deathmatch later this year at the Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG) Conference. At first glance, this might sound like a walk in the park. After all, if you've ever played a first-person-shooter against computer enemies, you'll know they can be as fast and accurate as, well, a computer. But the bots you've played will have had access to the game's inner workings -- they're looking at the world like Neo in The Matrix, with perfect knowledge of maps, weapons, and the positions of other players. For the "Visual AI Doom Competition," artificially intelligent bots will only have the same information as a human: they'll see the screen in front of them, and nothing more. "There are all sorts of video games that humans play way better than computers."

It's fun to ponder a future filled with self-driving cars, a world with breezy commutes where robot navigators have made deadly crashes a thing of the past. But how far off is that future, really? Last month, Google suggested that this driverless utopia may actually be much further away than many people may realize. In a speech at SXSW in Austin, Google's car project director Chris Urmson explained that the day when fully autonomous vehicles are widely available, going anywhere that regular cars can, might be as much as 30 years away. There are still serious technical and safety challenges to overcome. In the near term, self-driving cars may be limited to more narrow situations and clearer weather.

The ability of machines to accurately comprehend written language took another step forward thanks, in part, to Harry Potter. What could this tale provide to the field of artificial intelligence? Artificial language comprehension may be improved by reading Harry Potter, if the results of a new study are developed. Maluuba is a Canadian company centered on teaching machines how to learn, and researchers there now utilize the works of J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was one of the hundreds of books studied by machines designed to study artificial intelligence.

Even though they are a 38-year-old company, FLIR System's advanced, miniaturized thermal imaging sensors and cameras keep them hip in the world of computer vision where mobile startups are propelling the field. This morning they announced a new product--the Boson Thermal Camera. There are many more things these cameras can do…even the super-resolution similar to the much internet-maligned CSI "zoom in" is actually possible through software manipulation of these kinds of cameras according to Movidius's Jack Dashwood. One is the continued trend in miniaturization and its implications on interactive eyewear. The second is the fact that the Boson has a processor integrated directly into it.

Researchers in Nebraska tested a new tool on Friday that could eventually help in fighting grass fires -- drones. A team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln flew an unmanned aircraft over the prairie at the Homestead National Monument of America on Friday, dropping ping pong-like balls filled with a chemical mixture to ignite brush-clearing grass fires. Local and federal officials are interested in the technology because it could help clear overgrown vegetation in rugged, hard-to-reach terrain, said Michael Johnson, a spokesman for the National Park Service. The balls are filled with a chemical powder, potassium permanganate, before they're loaded into the drone. During flight, the aircraft pierces the ball with a needle and injects it with another chemical, glycol, before releasing it.

Editor's note: Digital Trends has partnered with WebVisions, the internationally recognized design, technology and user-experience conference, to help bring luminary Douglas Rushkoff to this year's event in Portland, Oregon. As part of our partnership, we're also pleased to feature select content from WebVisions' insightful blog, Word. This week, contributor Mark Wyner wonders how we go about teaching artificial intelligence right from wrong. Twitter has admitted that as many as 23 million (8.5 percent) of its user accounts are autonomous Twitterbots. Many are there to increase productivity, conduct research, or even have some fun.

Machine learning is a scientific discipline that works on construction and study of algorithms which operate by building a model from example inputs using the make predictions or decisions. With the number of people joining the nerdy geeks, machine learning has seen quite a lot of development over the course of years. Are you the one who has recently started or is planning to start the career in machine learning? If your answer is yes, I won't scare you with the words like it's quite a difficult job but then its hard nut to crack and if you take it as a motivation you will understand what I am trying to say. Many things in this world are difficult or they appear to be in the beginning but are not impossible.

Ben Dickson is a software engineer and freelance writer. He writes regularly on business, technology and politics. Computers and mobile devices running rich operating systems have a plethora of security solutions and encryption protocols that can protect them against the multitude of threats they face as soon as they become connected to the Internet. Such is not the case with IoT. Of the billions of IoT devices presently in use, a considerable percentage are sporting low-end processing power and storage capacity and don't have the capability to become extended with security solutions.

Whether you're in-store or online, the benefits of a personalized customer experience are undeniable. We want salespeople who can help us find exactly what we're looking for as quickly as possible; we return to lunch spots where all we have to ask for is "the usual." For e-tailers, personalization has traditionally relied upon recommendation engines, algorithms that look to match prior consumer clicks and purchases with like-minded cohorts. And personalization is indeed effective for those e-commerce sites. According to a recent Infosys survey, 74% of sites who have implemented personalization technology reported an increase in sales, 58 percent noted an increase in traffic, and 55% observed an increase in customer loyalty.

Poacher hunters follow a path created by PAWS, an AI-driven app. Humans tend to do pretty terrible things to the environment. And those who go about illegally killing animals and cutting down trees are downright criminal, and can be difficult to stop. So, the National Science Foundation has turned to artificial intelligence to help out. It's not the only time we've turned to technology to help fight poachers.