A spate of books that describe AI breakthroughs are out, or due shortly.

Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems' chief scientist, who wrote in Wired magazine about a future in which robots are the dominant form of life on earth, has a book in preparation. Jeff Hawkins, cofounder of Handspring, the PDA manufacturer, is working on a book about widespread AI; Tom Mitchell, professor of AI at Carnegie Mellon University is about to present his vision of the future.

AI pioneer and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil is working on his book, "The Singularity Is Near" a sequel to his previous best-seller, "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" (see hotlink below).

Rodney Brooks is director of MIT's AI Lab; his new book - "Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us " - promises that machines will have emotions, desires, fears, loves and pride (see hotlink below).

These gurus clearly believe that AI is on the brink of a major comeback. They're predicting that personal robotic servants, computers that can program themselves, and robots that cost a fraction of a human worker - all within the next 20 years.

An Israeli company Ai Research was recently funded with $4m to create a new form of life with 'Virtual Children' using technology that allows everyday language communication with computers.

San Francisco-based startup Emergent Minds is applying for government funding in an attempt to build neural networks that can learn and grow like living beings, with amazing commercial applications.

A recent RedHerring magazine article pooh-poohs all this as hype. In this essay, Geoffrey James insists that AI is a "technological backwater" and the business prospects simply don't add up. He scoffs that AI has been coming since the '60s and the AI dreams - and business opportunities - are likely to remain more science fiction than science fact.

But, the AI pundits continue to predict that generalized AI will be achieved within 20 years. The brilliant and irrepressible Ray Kurzweil debunks RedHerring eloquently with his own arguments. It will always be easy to scoff at AI as long as there are tasks at which humans are better, but the many derivatives of AI research are becoming increasingly vital to our economy and civilization.

Virtually every industry extensively uses intelligent algorithms, the trend now is that the "narrowness" of the intelligence of AI systems is becoming less narrow, with many applications beginning to combine multiple methodologies. "Strong AI" represents the culmination of these ongoing and accelerating trends.

The Web site Longbets.org has published 11 bets to sharpen long-term thinking on issues of social or scientific significance. The biggest bet (so far): $10,000. Ray Kurzweil bets Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development, that a computer or 'machine intelligence' will pass the Turing test (be able to successfully impersonate a human) by 2029.