The New York Times has a fascinating interactive feature on artifical intelligence. It lets you play rock-paper-scissors against a computer and reveals the logic the algorithm is applying to predict your next move.

Computers mimic human reasoning by building on simple rules and statistical averages. Test your strategy against the computer in this rock-paper-scissors game illustrating basic artificial intelligence. Choose from two different modes: novice, where the computer learns to play from scratch, and veteran, where the computer pits over 200,000 rounds of previous experience against you.

I found it quite amazing that the "veteran" was actually better then the "novice" when I played, despite the fact that I could reveal the computer's logic with a click everytime I wanted to. I tried to subject my moves to what I believed was complete randomness - but I guess humans are just really bad at being truly random at will. There is always some kind of subconscious logic guiding your decision - and with enough data to rely on, a computer becomes pretty good at guessing your next move.