Artificial Intelligence / Business Rules

Artificial Intelligence, also sometimes called by the discipline of Business Rules, has been a focus of my weekend and evening studies for years, ever since I met James [] and learned about how much higher his billing rate was than mine.
This aggravation only increased after an epiphany in one of James's Saturday sessions when I suddenly realized that, in essence, Artificial Intelligence is little more than syntactical sugar for abastracting out "if-then" logic statements.
So to summarize, I understand the basics of RETE and rules engines in general, and would know which tools to use to pursue this type of project. I cannot claim any direct experience though, other than my many sessions with James and others like me, trying to learn.
As a side issue, I have built some of my own "rules based" processing engines, though it is not Business Rules-ish in the sense that the rules are not always stored in a different medium or syntax. I also can't remember what they are.