If you are new to AI then I suggest you start here.
PC AI provides a good springboard to a range of subfields of AI.
Chatterbots are getting quite interesting, though whether they are, or can ever be, intelligent remains a moot point. Simon Laven's site is excellent place to start finding out about chatterbots. It gives you some background and has links to a large number of chatterbot sites. One of the best chatterbots around is A.L.I.C.E. winner of the Loebner prize in the year 2000.
Free source code can't be a bad thing. You will find lots of free AI software at this CMU site. You will need to start by looking at the readme.txt to find how things are organised. This is where you will find the AI classics like Winston's SHRDLU and Weizenbaum's ELIZA.
It is interesting that Joe Weizenbaum's ELIZA - a conversational bot that emulates a psychiatrist - lives on and a considerably improved version, still under development, may be found at ECC-Eliza.
There are AI related web sites which include news and bulletin boards where you can register and look in and participate in various AI discussions. I like the one at About.com.
There are a lot of mailing lists around the web. You will find quite a few AI related mailing lists at egroups.com.
And then there are news groups. Just fire up your favourite news reader and subscribe to the groups that take your fancy. I use the Free agent news reader because it is easy to use and free for personal use. You will find that there are some 20,000 news groups. Searching for those with ".ai" will get you the AI related groups though it will also give you a few that aren't, but it won't take too long to sort out.
Now if you want to participate in an AI project you may find it well worth your while to visit the Source Forge. There are over 150 open source AI projects here - many of them looking for assistance.
My own AI research is into go playing programs. Such programs are getting more attention now that computer chess has been cracked with Deep Blue playing at grandmaster level and being - arguably - the strongest player in the world today. Most of the stronger go programs play on the computer go ladder. This site is also a good starting point for finding out more about go, but there is also a computer go bibliography and there are a couple of programs that play go on-line on Jörch's Go page.
And last, but by no means least, there are my web pages where you will find descriptions of a couple of AI projects where I could use a bit of help.
Last updated 30 July, 2002