Sixteen years ago Garry Kasparov vs Deep Blue in computer chess
was the ultimate test of man vs machine. Now in the age of the
iphone, it's man vs computer vs bird...or more correctly
malevolent green pigs. This week in Sydney a group of
researchers from the Australian National University will conduct
what they hope will be the first of many artificial intelligence
challenges involving the incredibly popular game Angry Birds. In
what is bound to be one of the most popular elements of the 25th
Australasian conference on artificial intelligence, computer
programmers will compete on Wednesday in solving 10 new levels
of the game. The challenge for the progammers is to create a
system that will solve the levels. Their results will then be
compared to human players, who will tackle the levels on
Thursday. Associate professor Jochen Renz, one of four ANU
researchers involved, thinks this first year will be a human's
only chance to beat the computer, because the computer
programmers have only had four weeks to prepa