I asked a question earlier about which language to use for an AI prototype. The consensus seemed to be that if I want it to be fast, I need to use a language like Java or C+
It may be a good approach to start with a script, and call a compilation-based language from that script only for more advanced needs.
For instance, calling java from ruby script works quite well.
require "java"
# The next line exposes Java's String as JString
include_class("java.lang.String") { |pkg, name| "J" + name }
s = JString.new("f")