Can Robots Become Conscious?

Can you put it in a machine? And if you did, how could you ever know for sure? Unlike any other scientific topics, consciousness -- the first-person awareness of the world around -- is truly in the eye of the beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are? Could it be that my colleagues, my friends, my editors, my wife, my child, all the people I see on the streets of New York are actually just mindless automatons who merely act as if they were conscious human beings? Through logical analogy -- I am a conscious human being, and therefore you as a human being are also likely to be conscious -- I conclude I am probably not the only conscious being in a world of biological puppets.