http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/uh-oh-this-robot-just-passed-the-self-awareness-test-1299362

This is pretty awesome when you read the title and watch it happen, however I can't help but think if this the the entire article is misleading and is only for the sake of hyping things up and click baiting. Isn't it possible to just code the robot to do this in sequence, making it seem like it was self aware?

It is misleading. Passing a self-awareness test and being self aware are not the same thing. When you get in to this area in computer science it can get confusing, because tech blogs love hyperbole and throwing out buzzwords that make their story seem like something it's not. In this field there is debate over what self-awareness actually is in relation to computers and AI. There are some who believe that it is perceived and literally just means that the AI can programmatically reference itself and distinguish itself from other AI, whereas others stick to the traditional definition of self-awareness as it relates to consciousness which would mean that for an AI to be truly self aware it would also need to be conscious. This discrepancy often leads to people reading something like this article and immediately thinking, "oh shit they made AI that's conscious" but that's far from the truth. If you investigate these claims it's pretty much nothing all that special: the robot was designed in a very specific way to pass an older self-awareness test that doesn't even begin to take consciousness into account. The entire thing is geared towards perceived self-awareness and not actual self-awareness, so it's probably not the breakthrough you're hoping for. We don't really know what consciousness is yet, so shooting for perceived self-awareness is a more realistic goal. The issue is that true self-awareness is still really tough to determine and we don't have fool proof ways to test for it. This robot passes this one test because it was designed to. It's not a very deep test. There are likely other tests that it would fail at, since it's certainly not "thinking" for itself.

Have you guys watched the movie "Chappie"?