[bob1029]

I think things get really interesting when you combine small, efficient ANNs with evolutionary/genetic algorithms.

The biggest challenge with these is coming up with a function that clearly represents the fitness of a candidate. EAs are worthless if you can't provide good selection pressure over time. There are always multiple conflicting objectives in the most practical cases. I've recently discovered that you can skip all the nasty objective weighting business if you just select the Pareto front every generation. You never know when a trip down a less important path might result in the most optimal global solution.