I don''t think it will be an AI for dummies book... at least I hope not! I''m guessing it will be more like the Game Programming Gems series... Although the chapters vary a lot in their complexity, I find even the simple ones are worth reading to get those little nuggets of information and insight that may have been missed in other articals.

As for the ''art'' thing, I totally agree but even the best artists can get inspiration from other peoples work (assuming they''re not just inspired to copy it

Quite often while reading about a field of AI that at first seemed totaly seperate from what you''re doing, you can suddenly realise how what they''ve learned can be adapted to your own project. That''s how a lot of progress is made - people bringing other peoples work and ideas together with their own - not generally by individuals who believed that they could think of everything on their own.

Having a lot of articles in a book can make you read topics you would have skipped if you found them on the internet... and as I said above, in my opinion that is where some of the best inspiration can come from.

Just make sure you don''t take what they say as the final word on the subject, and keep testing out your own ideas.

Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that...

Ronin_54 : what makes you think anyone can make great ai?
the best ai ive seen use Neural Nets or GAs or ... -none of which were made great by people, they were made great by systems, evolution & adaption, etc.
imo the great ai is goinu be incomprehensible to a human, it functions chaotically, and functional chaos is near impossible to design.

Ronin''s seems to be going through his rebelious teen years.

Even if it is an AI for beginners (which I doubt anyway), there are so many topics covered I''m willing to bet a lot of money you won''t know half the topics in there. Plus these are industry pro''s, who know what they''re talking about and have better things to do than to teach beginners.

I''m doing postgrad research in AI (after a degree in AI), and the few articles I''ve read already have been very enlightening.