[jerf]

Your query is so vague it's hard to know where to even start; you're looking for "artificial intelligence" or "machine learning". Here's a halfway decent start, actually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence#Tools , it at least arms you with a lot of search terms and introductory overviews.

Neural nets and genetic algorithms are plenty interesting, it's just that they're way more interesting than they are useful. (Also note I didn't say useless. Just, not that useful.)