Lisp

One prerequisite for almost any CSE course is knowledge of some high-level programming language.

But you are strongly advised to (learn and) use Lisp if you intend to do any research in AI.

Moreover, there are good reasons to learn Lisp even if you want to make it in the real world of e-commerce; see:

1. Paul Graham's Lisp Resources

2. St. Amant, Robert, & Young, R. Michael (2001), "Common Lisp Resources on the Web", intelligence 12(3): 21-23.

3. ... and, especially:
   Graham, Paul (2003), "Beating the Averages".

4. You might also be interested in:
   Gabriel, Richard P. (1991), "Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big"

5. Finally, some kinds words about Lisp are included in:
   Hayes, Brian (2008), "Calculemus! Celebrating 25 Years of Celebrating Computation", American Scientist 96(5) (September-October): 362-366.

If you decide to use Lisp:
The implementation of Lisp for this course is Allegro Common Lisp, which runs under the Unix and Linux operating systems. You will be expected to learn the idiosyncrasies of Allegro Common Lisp on your own ( Shapiro's text should be of help).

For more information on Lisp, see Marty Hall's "An Introduction and Tutorial for Common Lisp" website.