On February 9, 2022, Sutskever tweeted his belief that current neural networks may already be "slightly conscious." As Futurism points out, Sutskever's take is not a popular one. Most experts believe machine consciousness is still some time off despite recent advances in AI development. As a result, it's unclear whether Sutskever's statement is meant to be taken literally or facetiously, or whether it was merely a prediction about what the future may hold. Of course, the other possibility is that Sukskever's role as the top scientist at one of the leading AI firms gives him an insight that few others have.

Can the origin of life be explained with quantum mechanics? And if so, are there quantum algorithms that could encode life itself? We're a little closer to finding out the answers to those big questions thanks to new research carried out with an IBM supercomputer. Encoding behaviours related to self-replication, mutation, interaction between individuals, and (inevitably) death, a newly created quantum algorithm has been used to show that quantum computers can indeed mimic some of the patterns of biology in the real world. This is still an early proof-of-concept prototype, but it opens the door to diving further into the relationship between quantum mechanics and the origins of life.

We're building robots that can walk and talk like us, but now we're giving them another a human quality you might not expect: the ability to feel pain. If nothing else, it should give us a chance if they ever try to overthrow humanity. The researchers behind the technology think pain-sensitive robots are worth developing so they can keep themselves - and the humans working with them - safe from harm. If there's a threat to a robot's gears or motors, for example, it can take evasive action. "Pain is a system that protects us," one of the team, Johannes Kuehn from Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany, told Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrum.

A study conducted by researchers at Stanford University and published in Science Daily found that humans get physiologically aroused by touching a robot's intimate areas. The researchers used Aldebaran Robotics' NAO, a humanoid robot, for their study. The robot instructed participants in the study to either touch or point at 13 different parts of its body. They then monitored the participants' responses as they carried out each command. The study found that participants more hesitant to touch more intimate parts of the robot, such as its eyes and buttocks, and they were physiologically aroused when touching these areas.