As others have indicated, AI planning is a significant field, critical to self-driving cars, space probes, etc. Markov Decision Processes is a great sub-field.

As others have indicated, AI planning is a significant field, critical to self-driving cars, space probes, etc. Markov Decision Processes is a great sub-field. > A good "cuccoo field" for that would be video games, where such planning systems would be a holy grail. The game developer conventional wisdom for some time has been that very good AI is not worth building [1] because it is not very entertaining. I believe that's by far the dominant opinion. But, there are some interesting ways that AI is being explored in ways other than strong AI opponents [2]. [1] http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/13/electric-dreams-part-1-the-lost-future-of-ai/ http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/13/electric-dreams-p... [2] http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~soar/sitemaker/workshop/27/vanLent.pdf http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~soar/sitemaker/workshop/27/vanLen...