Machines and Consciousness

Adam Oliner of MIT has some interesting ideas on machines and consciousness; instead of discussing whether or not machines could possibly become conscious, he wonders if we would be able to tell whether or not they were conscious. He mentions a controversial "Turing Test" which would supposedly be the authority on if a machine possessed consciousness, but it seems a bit quaint and simple. The problem, therein, lies not with machines developing consciousness, but in our ability to recognize that consciousness and in our definition of consciousness. Oliner seems to feel that machines with consciousness is possible if we only had a concrete and consistent definition of what it means to be conscious. (http://adam.oliner.net/comp/consciousness.html#machineturing)