Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning: Computer learning to play a game

Title:

Working with Artificial Intelligence

Objective:

I have always been interested in artificial intelligence, and was especially 
interested when Mr. Latimer told us at the tech-lab meeting that we would 
have oppurtunities to research on how we could make the computer try to 
learn how to do something on its own.

Justification:

As I have said before, I have always been interested in artificial intelligence. 
I have always loved trying to make my programs too smart for even me, the 
programmer, to beat (when making a game). The project that I have 
described above, however, will go a step beyond that, and make the 
computer actually learn everything by itself.

Description:

I could accomplish this by either getting some books on the topic and trying 
to run programs that succesfully learn things on their own, or I could use the 
internet to get lots of information.

Limitations:

Some of the limitations that I would have are if I decided to use books, then 
I would have to buy the books, which would cost money. However, if I 
decided to use the internet, I would be faced with the fact that some of the 
internet sites are complete bogus. Other than that, however, I can see no 
limitations on my project.