Does Facebook plan to compete with Google's artificial intelligence?

Every year, artificial intelligence (AI) software bots compete and battle it out in the video game Universe of StarCraft. But a new player representing (of all things) Facebook entered into this arena -- CherryPi, an AI player designed by a team of eight people from or involved with Facebook's AI research lab. This foray into multiplayer gaming established Facebook as direct competition for others, like Google and even individual hobbyists (three of whom finished in the top three places). Gabriel Synnaeve, a researcher at Facebook, described CherryPi as a "baseline" prototype to learn and build from, he said, "We wanted to see how it compares to existing bots, and in particular test if it has flaws that need correcting." Some expect Facebook and Google to lag behind independently-designed bots for awhile, despite the tech giants' inexhaustible resources; "For a couple of years I predict the hobbyist, mostly rule-based bots, will still do well," said David Churchill, a professor of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, which organized AIIDE, an academic conference that includes contests like the StarCraft competition.