I was going to be more cautious but, this is the road to disaster. There is so much room to turn apparently good intentions into ugly ugly concrete implementations that I'd rather act as if this post never existed.

What post?

Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.

-- Edsger Dijkstra

"On the contrary, it's because someone knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance... so it's the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about! "

-- Richard Feynman

"I have now reigned about 50 years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot. They amount to fourteen."
-- Abd Er-Rahman III of Spain, 960 AD.

I purchased AI: A Modern Approach by Norvig and Russell in march 2008, and by December I'd read a pathetic 80 pages due to work and general cant be botheredness. So I decided to choose a deadline that had some sort of symbolic significance. I would have to finish the book before the end of the 2008. Yes, that meant over 1000 pages of textbook material before the year was out.

I calculated it would take 40 pages a day; skimming was not allowed nor was moving ahead without a solid understanding of the material. I knew that the end of the book would be a cushion, since there were a number of pages on philosophical issues that were pretty familiar for me.

The result was successful and I learned a few things similar to what Yvain has posted. One of them is leave yourself outs, don't be too ambitious, because the damage of a failure is persistent beyond a particular case. If you don't have a good idea of how demanding the objective will be, err on the side of laziness, or do a smaller test run. Choose small short term objectives, because if you don't calibrate well and end up having to strain, it won't be for long and you'll get a better idea what you can do. In my case I went on 5 day trip and had to drag the book along and steal time to read, not good. But thanks to the experience I know that a 1000+ page text book per month is not realistic for me.

I counter with:

Many things do not happen as they should, and most things do not happen at all. It is the duty of the conscientious historian to correct these defects.

-- Herodotus

"Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so. " - Marcus Aurelius

This would have been a great suggestion if I hadn't just spent an hour talking to Hutter during a visit to a small workshop in Canberra; I think we said most of what we had to say to each other.

Carla Bruni

Peter Voss, Dharmendra Modha, Henry Markram.

Ben Goertzel on how he's research director for SIAI but Eliezer "does not consider his AI theory reasonable"