What about the area of artificial
intelligence and machine learning?
It depends what area of AI.
is it still been dominated by LISP?
Not at all -- unless it's suddenly had a resurgence in the last few years.
how much is python being used in AI?
are any of the newer functional
languages, clojure for example, being
used in research?
People will use whatever language is appropriate for their domain. You also have to factor in the availability of libraries -- if you're doing some data mining task, you might download Weka and use Java. Or if you're doing some agent theory research that involves sending structured XML messages, you might find yourself using whatever language your favourite XML parser is in. Or if you're building a high-performance backgammon program, you might stick with C/C++ and use an existing evaluation function (as I did with my research using gnubackgammon).
in the area of expert systems, which
shells are most used/popular today?
are there any interesting developments
language wise which you know of?
Expert systems really aren't so much the rage anymore. As research went along they were found to be brittle systems that need too much manual TLC. If you're going to try and detect cancer, or qualify someone for a credit card, you're better off using some ML system, like a Bayesian Network.
I think you'll find most AI textbooks are fairly platform agnostic since the underlying algorithms are platform agnostic.