Man racing to outsmart the machine -- with nothing less than the fate of the world at stake -- is a classic movie storyline. In WarGames, Matthew Broderick convinces the W.O.P.R. computer that thermonuclear war is futile; matinee idol Keir Dullea outsmarts the wily HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey by sneaking into the Logic Memory Center; and Linda Hamilton is always one step ahead of Skynet in The Terminator trilogy. Movie computers, for all their power, speed and single-mindedness, still can't hold a candle to real live people when it comes to creative problem-solving. And it's not just on screen.

For years, programmers have been trying to create a computer that will beat a human player at Go, the ancient Chinese game of strategy. Despite a million dollar prize at stake, computers have only managed to triumph on a scaled back game board. Go is infinitely more complex than chess, so the possible moves that a good player can intuit -- like sensing when a configuration won't work -- are still too sophisticated for computers, which calculate quickly, but, mechanically, with "brute force." According to the Times Online, "These are the very hallmarks of human intelligence -- adaptation to uncertainty, intuition, wisdom, the ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, and a sense of mortality -- that computers cannot replicate, yet."

Thank goodness for us.

Click here for the complete schedule of WarGames on AMC.

To review this movie, click here.

To see more computer villainy, click here.