... my general impression is that most people on LessWrong are mostly unaware of the progress made in statistical machine learning (presumably the brand of AI that most LWers care about) and cognitive science in the last 20 years ... . And I'm not talking about impressive-looking results that dodge around the real issues, I'm talking about fundamental progress towards resolving the key problems in artificial intelligence. Anyone planning to do AI research should probably at least understand these first, and what the remaining obstacles are.

I'm not planning to do AI research, but I do like to stay no more than ~10 years out of date regarding progress in fields like this. At least at the intelligent-outsider level of understanding. So, how do I go about getting and keeping almost up-to-date in these fields. Is MacKay's book a good place to start on machine learning? How do I get an unbiased survey of cognitive science? Are there blogs that (presuming you follow the links) can keep you up to date on what is getting a buzz?