"MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden has a column discussing the potential dangers of building super-intelligent machines without building in some sort of motivation or drive." These are teenage issues, no? "Reward" is certainly essential. That could be given as knowledge, added memory, communication. The more control these sorts of machine have over human existence, the more empathy for humanity and knowledge of consequences they need to have built it. (Letting your sixteen year old loose with the car at night is a good model.) AI's machines as part of human entertainment, VR stories, are a different matter.

If the cloth can be developed to capture light/dark/color impressions of the space immediately around it and could transmit that info to a camo wrap (camo paint?) it could be used to mask really big objects, like the clapboard house your spouse has been trying to get you to paint for the past five years. "That isn't a grove of trees. That's my unpainted house. Watch for falling paint chips." No end of uses. Nighttime raids to cover garden gnomes. Teenagers who are heard but not seen.

I hope we're not talking about Schrodinger's cat. Philosophical felines are difficult to clean up after. On the other hand, if we could produce an AI cat to chase nanotech mice around a treadmill to generate synaptic discharges .... If we are able to produce consciousness that is swappable and manipulate-able, wouldn't WE be the artificial consciousness by our own definitions?