I know absolutely nothing about AI programming, but it is a field that i am extremely interested in. i wanted to know: where should i start? some good documents for the extreme beginner or some programming exercises to practice with would be a big help. thanks =) nyt3

Think first about what part of AI you are interested in. The first question is whether you are interested in game AI or in "serious" AI. Game AI basically deals with programming the behaviour of the non-playing characters in a game. "Serious" AI deals with things like language processing, artificial vision... These two things are both called "AI" and they do have some things in common, but the differences are huge. Which one are you most interested in?

both are interesting, but game ai more so at this point.

I would start with the book "Programming Game AI by Example". It has very detailed examples and you can code as you go if you want to. That should keep you entertained for a while.

If you want a good reference for "serious" AI as well, check out "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach".

Have you done any programming yet? If so what language(s)? You might find the book "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence: Case Studies in Common Lisp" interesting, depending on what sort of AI you want to do (if you don't know Common Lisp yet though, you might want to get a book on it first).

my main language is c/c++. i played with vb once, but it didnt thrill me. that was probably because i use linux a lot and c++ works better with it =) and thanks, i'll check out those books.