Angry Birds Space... just one of the many Angry Birds games now available to the public.

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.

My guess, this will be the humans' only chance.

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.

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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 prepare.

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Artificial intelligence taking on the green pigs