Vortexx,
Have you ever heard of genetic alghorithms? There's an issue of popular science, I can't remember what month but it is from this year, and it talks about how they took a stick figure, punched in a few rules such as basic newtonian physics, and then gave the stick figure a command: Walk to the other side of the screen. It attempted to, took about one step, then fell over. Another frame started, and that stick figure passed on the trait that allowed it to take that one step. so the next one went, this time, it took a few more steps, these ones were a bit better, but it still fell over. That figure then passed on that part of its action to the next generation, who took a few steps, then fell over. This same process happened something like fifty times, untill the figure was able to walk perfectly accross the screen. They tried it a few more times, but with different modes of walking, same thing happened. There were some people saying that this is the gateway into AI, that although it's simple, it could do many things. Say, for instance, you design airplanes for a living, so, instead of designing the plane and then testing it in actual flight, you punch in the physical characteristics and problems of flight. You then tell the program to design an airplane that flies, and it will go through many different randomly selected designs, passing on the best characteristics of the previous generation, untill you have an airplane that flies. Sort of like evolution on a computer. I think that's cool. If there will ever be "AI," I think it will be closer to something like that.