When cheating with a robot is really cheating?

This question is not new, at all! For several decades sci-fi writers, philosopher, AI and robotics researcher and many others have asked this question. Obviously, not in this form.

The politically correct forms for this question are: “When a robot is self-aware?”, “Can a machine have a soul?” or “Can a machine have emotions?”. However, I think the version in this article title will be the first one to be relevant for the general population. All these questions share the same goal: they try to identify what may make a machine a “human”. There are qualities such self-awareness, the ability to feel emotions, the “soul”, that we consider our exclusive. But as the research does its job and machines become more “intelligent”, we see this belief challenged and it is natural to ask ourselves after which point we have to consider a machine alive.