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Here is an idea that has come up before in other forums:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/13811/
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=309846
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1158589

Web cam (or light sensors if present) used to assess ambient light level once every few minutes or on startup and that information used to determine a suitable screen brightness.

In practice I don't think this is going to be a highly tuned thing - more likely the web cam image would assess the ambient condition as bright, normal, dim at best. Perhaps only a low light detection. Also I susspect each system would need to be trained on images from its own camera.

All that said I think the functionality would be neat and not interfere with the operation of much else.

It's an interesting idea, for sure.

Taking it further, depending on the power-saving profile, one could take it to extreme powersave whilst the system tries to adapt the screen brightness to a level suitable enough to still use the screen whilst low enough to conserve power.

Gah - I hate it when people post negative votes without giving any reason!