> AI research and related topics and startups rarely make news. Research of any sort rarely makes news. The exceptions involve universities with very zealous,

> AI research and related topics and startups rarely make news. Research of any sort rarely makes news. The exceptions involve universities with very zealous, hard-working P.R. people (who pretty much always overstate the importance and impact of the work they cover). As for startups, they, and other businesses, are there to make money. And there just isn't much money to be made in A.I. (yet?). The only commercially viable idea to come out of A.I., that I know of, is the expert system. And that turned out to be a pretty small market. [EDIT: Seems I was way off here. See replies, and my apologies to all the hard-working A.I. researchers out there.] > Is it really such a dead field? Well, not dead, but it certainly is not what it once was. 50 years ago, many knowledgeable people thought that machines with human-level capabilities were just around the corner. Today it's just Ray Kurzweil. 50 years of rather dismal results tends to dampen the enthusiasm of prospective researchers. > There's never any breakthroughs announced, .... "Breakthrough" is a word used by P.R. people. Real researchers know that knowledge is almost always advanced in small steps, building on previous work. When you read about a "breakthrough"--in any field--be skeptical. > ... and there's no grandiose research projects underway that I know of. Almost certainly not. This is because the U.S. Congress, and similar organizations elsewhere, have not made A.I. a funding priority. No grant $$$ means no big research projects at universities. (And no obvious commercial possibilities means no big research projects at corporations.) But there are certainly plenty of little projects. > Are there any websites that try to track the different AI projects going on? That would be difficult, since, when a researcher starts a project, he generally does not announce the fact to the world. Research projects often have no official status. It's just a few people--or one person--playing around with some ideas. If they come up with something interesting, then they publish a paper about it, but that is only after the fact. So it would be hard to gather the information for such a website. Generally, the way to track current research in a field is to look at the relevant journals. Unfortunately, this can be tricky without expertise in the field. In any case, here are a few links to A.I. journals, to get you started: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research http://www.jair.org/ http://www.jair.org/ Journal of Machine Learning Research http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ Journal of Intelligent Systems http://www.jisjournal.org/ http://www.jisjournal.org/ Another possibility is to find an online discussion group about A.I. research. However, I can't help you there.