>> The point of artificial intelligence is not ( at least in my and several other prominent AI scientist's such as Andrew Ng's opinion) to create a conscious intelligence, but to create intelligence that can do many of the useful tasks that we can do.

Your syntax is suggesting that you consider yourself to be a prominent AI scientist like Andrew Ng, but I'll assume that's just a mistake!

As to what is really the aim of AI as a field, there are two issues here. On the one hand, the original AI project as conceived back in the early '50s by the likes of Turing indeed aimed at getting computers to mimic human intelligence. Everything that has happened since then in the field has followed from that original and grandiose quest.

It's true that in more recent years the applications of AI have tended to be aimed at much humbler goals, like performing specific, isolated tasks at a level approaching (and sometimes surpassing) the human- select tasks like image classification or machine translation etc.

However, this is by necessity and not by choice. Think of it this way: if we would benefit from a system that can perform select tasks as well as humans, then we would benefit a lot more by a system able to perform _all_ conceivable tasks that well (or better). In that sense, the motivation of the original AI project remains alive and well.

Consciousness of course seems to be an integral part of human intelligence- and it's reasonable to expect that it would be a prerequisite for strong AI also. In that sense, yeah, I'm afraid the discussion about consciousness is part of AI and will remain that for a long time to come.