An AI? For my Dwarf Fortress? Is it more likely than I think?
Daddy likes.
<3 writing bots. Can I suggest an initial memory-based autodesignation thing? It's really irritating trying to channel out a very large, square region...or worse yet, channel out the long 1 tile wide landbridge you've been using. A bot that designates the next tile once one tile has been mined out would be the best thing in the universe.
Visual recognition is absolutely the worst thing in the world that you could ever try on DF, in fact DF is one place I would never want to use it. AIs are VERY bad at recognizing gestalts--they couldn't reliably tell where someone was going, and that means that when there's a farmer and an herbalist nearby, it would very likely get lost. AIs are terrible at limited information, and the usual solution is "get as much information as you can"...I don't think you want it to pause and scroll around the whole map every few frames, sitting on each screen for long enough to watch all the different creatures cycle through. DF also has a surprising amount of ambiguity in its visual representation; having sand that flashes yellow when it's targeted for mining is not very useful...and while humans are QUITE good at detecting motion and noticing the different flash frequency, AIs are much worse.
I could imagine a memory-based DF bot doing quite well, actually, when it comes to executing predefined plans with very little deviation. I would love to see a bot that jousts with all the different professions, shuffling them around as necessary.
Also excellent is: AIs are really good at paying attention to everything at once, because humans have limited attention spans and like to finish one thing at a time. It could surely make much better use of idle dwarves...or at least the dwarves that a human wouldn't manage as closely.
Really though I think it would be best for managing building and digging, by automatically designating and constructing things...in the right order.
/bot writer
//for muds and Puzzle Pirates only