Conscious Robots Will Be 'Bigger Than Curing Cancer,' Scientists Say

Scientists have long considered robot consciousness a subject fraught with ethical--maybe even moral--pitfalls, and so they left it out of the artificial intelligence equation. But that's no longer the case, says a Columbia University engineer. Hod Lipson, Columbia's director of the Creative Machines Lab, recently told the New York Times that the idea of a robot with a conscious was traditionally taboo. "We were almost forbidden from talking about it," Lipson said. "Don't talk about the c-word; you won't get tenure. So in the beginning I had to disguise it, like it was something else."