Speculation on Life and Artificial Intelligence

Around a year ago (before The Prestige was released), I was studying for my Artificial Intelligence class when some strange ideas wandered through my head. In order to preserve them, I wrote them down on a sheet of notebook paper. I was just going through my notebooks when I stumbled upon these notes again.

Life
What constitutes a soul or an awareness? I can be certain that I exist presently because I am currently thinking and aware. I believe even Descartes can agree with that.

When I go to sleep, I lose consciousness. I am no longer aware. Am I the same person when I wake up? Does the same consciousness pick up where it left of, or does the old one end and a new one take its place? I have read that when we sleep, the section of our brain that is used for long-term memory is shut off. Perhaps when we sleep, we are still conscious, but we simply can't remember much of it when we awaken. I once heard that a person might consider his life just a collection of his memories. That definitely puts sleep and dreams in a strange classification. Is a life defined by a combination of a person's stream of consciousness and his collection of memories?

The same question gets stronger in circumstances such as a brain transplant. Or teleportation. If all of the molecules in my body are disassembled and then reassembled in a new place, does the same consciousness get transferred, or does one person die while a new, identical one is reborn, completely oblivious to the fact that his old consciousness has "died".

AI
A being has a thought cycle. What occupies that thought cycle at a given time is determined by things such as the being's interests and "interrupts" (as in computing) from its senses. I wonder how it breaks its thought cycle to remember something it needs to do.

A being might be given a set of instincts, which is behavior the being is urged to do in a given circumstance. Whether or not the being follows the instinct is up to its decision-making process. After repetitive behavior, that behavior should become more and more instinctive. I wonder how.

I wonder if a being that is given a strong desire to learn and a given set of instincts might be able to find its own instincts strange. I wonder if a being modeled in a human image might find a modified set of instincts foreign.

A being could be created to dislike boredom as a method to gain a desire to learn and gain interests. I wonder how it could discern from a topic that is interesting and one that is not.

Boredom could be a state of mind where there are no current interests or activities to occupy its thought cycle.