Something interesting I found while researching are Artificial Neural Networks, they essentially look for patterns and use various algorithms to create something somewhat similar to an artificial brain that can learn using various methods. I'm a mechanical guy, so I don't fully comprehend everything, but it seems to be some kind of step towards the Artificial Intelligence we've seen in movies and such.
Link:
https://www.dacs.dtic.mil/techs/neural/neural_ToC.php
-Greg