Robot Uprising Watch: Computers beat humans at Go.

I can see it now: "So computer, another game of Go?" "Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War instead?" Way to "go" scientists.

Go -- the Asian board game once thought too complex for computers to master -- is finally succumbing to silicon power. Today at AAAS, a computer program bested an American professional.

The loser, James Kerwin, played with a sizeable handicap, but computer programs are getting better by the week, says Robert Hearn, a mathematician at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire. Based on predictable advances in computing power, he rockons that a program will beat the best professional Go players within 28 years.

"A lot of people have thought of Go as the last bastion of human superiority over computers, at least as far as board games go," Hearn said. "Previous to this no one would have imagined that a computer would be able to beat a professional."

Go is played widely in Asia and holds a far more important position there than chess does in the West, said Elwyn Berlekamp, another mathematician who studies the game, based at the University of California in Berkeley.

The game is played on by two players who place black and white stones on a 19-by-19 square board. Players alternate turns placing a stone on the board, and the goal is to encircle another player's stones to the point where she has no moves left.