Realistic: Software development, to be the best it can be, will be over the scope of several checkpoints; when I get back to school, I'm going to lose a lot of time during the day to devote to Kagaku... As I said before, though, the Initiative will be meant to be a long-term project, anyhow, so I'm not too concerned.

Philosophical: I sometimes wonder what everyone's obsession is with repicating human intelligence in an AI; 'If it can't do X it's not smart', 'It's not intelligence because of Y', etc. The thing is, who's to say that intelligence has to be just like ours? In any case, what's the point of replicating a human's form of consciousness exactly as it is, anyway? Just to say we can do it? I didn't decide to go into AI just to build silicon humans. That would be silly. I think, for me, it would be enough evidence of a high form of consciousness if, when posed with a question such as "How do you know you're alive?", the robot responded with something along the lines of Descartes' famous line, "I think, therefore, I am."

Just my thoughts.