In an apparent move to feed its smart-hardware ambitions, Google has bought an artificial intelligence startup, DeepMind, for somewhere in the ballpark of $500 million. Considering all of the data Google sifts through, and the fact that it might be getting into robotics, it's not completely absurd that they'd want some software to give a robotic helping hand. (Facebook apparently wanted the company, too, and they've already made moves to wrangle their own sprawling web of information.) But the other part of this story is a little stranger: the deal reportedly came under the condition that Google create an "ethics board" for the project.