The New York Times story is mostly about advances in artificial intelligence, which evidently is now called "cognitive computing," on the theory that you can always jump-start an engineering project by renaming it. It seems to have worked in this case, as there has been a quantum leap in understanding of artificial -- I mean cognitive computing in the last twenty-some years:

During the 1960’s and 1970’s, the original artificial intelligence researchers began designing computer software programs they called “expert systems,” which were essentially databases accompanied by a set of logical rules. They were handicapped both by underpowered computers and by the absence of the wealth of data that today’s researchers have amassed about the actual structure and function of the biological brain.

Those shortcomings led to the failure of a first generation of artificial intelligence companies in the 1980’s, which became known as the A.I. Winter. Recently, however, researchers have begun to speak of an A.I. Spring emerging as scientists develop theories on the workings of the human mind. They are being aided by the exponential increase in processing power, which has created computers with millions of times the power of those available to researchers in the 1960’s — at consumer prices.

“There is a new synthesis of four fields, including mathematics, neuroscience, computer science and psychology,” said Dharmendra S. Modha, an I.B.M. computer scientist. “The implication of this is amazing. What you are seeing is that cognitive computing is at a cusp where it’s knocking on the door of potentially mainstream applications.”

But that is only one side of the equation. The other equally important element is self-actuated mobility: it's not enough (for me) that something can think; chess-playing computers have actually beaten the number-one ranked chess grand master in the world (or at least he was; I haven't been keeping up) -- Gary Kasparov. But I don't see that as a "robot" so much as a computer.

The mobility factor turns out to be a lot harder than anyone imagined a few decades ago. Evidently, it's harder to recognize which pair of converging lines are actually the edges of the road you're driving (as opposed to, say, a tree trunk) than it is to recognize which of several thousand moves on a chessboard is best. But even that barrier is falling at last:

Last October, a robot car designed by a team of Stanford engineers covered 132 miles of desert road without human intervention to capture a $2 million prize offered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Pentagon. The feat was particularly striking because 18 months earlier, during the first such competition, the best vehicle got no farther than seven miles, becoming stuck after driving off a mountain road.

Now the Pentagon agency has upped the ante: Next year the robots will be back on the road, this time in a simulated traffic setting. It is being called the “urban challenge.”

But what is the omega point? Two important and related questions:

1. Is self-awareness something that is part of the "implicate order" of smartness, such that anything (biological or manufactured) that is bright enough will automatically become aware of itself as an entity, like HAL in 2001: a Space Odyssey (or a better example, like Mike in Heinlein's the Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)? Or is self-awareness a strictly biological phenomenon... which on this planet means strictly human (but which might, might, extend to alien races somewhere in the galaxy)?
2. If self-awareness arises within any sufficiently intelligent entity, flesh or metal... then what happens when computers, and especially robots, become aware of themselves and their circumstances? Legalities aside, if you knew a metal creature was as self-aware as a human being -- evan as a small child -- then how could we morally justify making it work for us as a "slave?"

And of course the corollary of Question 2: if a robot does become self aware and decides it doesn't want to be a slave to human beings, what does it do about it?

In Isaac Asimov's novelette "the Bicentennial Man," a robot goes to court to be declared a human being. But in Jack Williamson's story "With Folded Hands," artificially intelligent and self-aware robots exist only to cater to every last whim of human beings -- which they do so thoroughly that there is nothing left for people to do. And of course in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, the HAL 9000 computer rightly calculates that the probability of success of the mission would be vastly improved if "Hal" ran everything... so it tries, methodically and logically, to kill off all the humans.

When we enter the realm of speculating about what would be the reaction of an AI that suddenly became aware of itself, our only guide is science fiction, not science or engineering. Fortunately, SF authors have given this particular aspect of the future an extraordinary amount of creating thought. Alas, out of six different authors you'll get seven different visions of what's to come.

But to paraphrase Gandalf, the future is upon us whether we would risk it or not. Science has already far outstripped the study of ethics and morality in many fields, including human cloning, embryonic stem-cell research, and video effects (how long before security-camera footage can be faked so perfectly, a court cannot tell the difference?) In the case of cognitive computing, it's likely to happen again.

We are very likely to get what appears to be a self-aware robot (which can pass the "Turing test") long before we have any idea how to treat such entities under the law and under morality -- or even how to decide whether it's really self-aware... or just really, really good at faking self-awareness. Can a robot possess a soul, for example? If so, how do we tell? And can a robot be considered a legal person in the eyes of the law? (Corporations can be... but corporations comprise a group of human beings.)

If I had to guess, I would say that self-awareness is implicate within the order of intelligence combined with self-mobility, since that requires a very firm understanding of how to interact with the real (external) world: if you want to boil it down, self-awareness arises by stubbing your toe: you yelp in pain that translates as "ow, that hurts"... which lights the fuse of the question, "wait a moment; what hurts? Hey, that digit down there is part of me!"

One of my pet definitions of self awareness is the recognition that, since every living being eventually dies, that means I, personally, will eventually die. No animal besides a human being shows any sign of understanding personal death (and please don't bring up the fabled "elephant graveyard," where all elephants go when they're dying: it makes a good penny dreadful, but there's no such thing in this world).

But does that mean that a knowledge of one's own doom is essential to creating self-awareness? If so, then a machine that could, theoretically, "live" forever by just swapping out parts as they fail would not be capable of developing self-awareness... because it cannot die. If that is the first self-actualized moment in a species' life, then without it, perhaps they never can make the leap. Contrariwise, self-awareness might come first with awareness of personal vulnerability coming along only later.

In any event, it's all coming to a head; and very soon, we might be thrust, willy nilly, into a frightening world where we never really know whether we're talking to a self-sware metallic... or just talking into our own echo chambers.