内容摘要：Zephaniah died eight weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, sparking tributes across his home city that have so far included

Zephaniah died eight weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, sparking tributes across his home city that have so far included

Israel imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive two weeks later, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.It said the steps put pressure on the armed group to release the 58 hostages still held in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

On 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would "take control of all areas" of Gaza. The following day, he said Israel would also temporarily ease the blockade and allow a "basic" amount of food in.The families of the remaining hostages have urged Netanyahu to agree a new ceasefire with Hamas to secure their release.On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Israeli government "supported" a new ceasefire proposal that was sent to Hamas by US special envoy Steve Witkoff.

"Israel signed off on this proposal before it was sent to Hamas," she said.However, a senior Hamas official later told the BBC that the group rejected the proposal because it contradicted the discussions that it had with Witkoff.

The official said it did not include guarantees that the temporary ceasefire would lead to a permanent end to the fighting or that Israeli troops would withdraw to the positions they held before 2 March.

Israeli and US media cited Israeli officials as saying Witkoff's proposal included releasing 10 living hostages and the remains of dead hostages in two phases in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.The idea of machines with their own minds has long been explored in science fiction. Worries about AI stretch back nearly a hundred years to the film Metropolis, in which a robot impersonates a real woman.

A fear of machines becoming conscious and posing a threat to humans is explored in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the HAL 9000 computer attacks astronauts onboard its spaceship. And in the final Mission Impossible film, which has just been released, the world is threatened by a powerful rogue AI, described by one character as a "self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite".But quite recently, in the real world there has been a rapid tipping point in thinking on machine consciousness, where credible voices have become concerned that this is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

The sudden shift has been prompted by the success of so-called large language models (LLMs), which can be accessed through apps on our phones such as Gemini and Chat GPT. The ability of the latest generation of LLMs to have plausible, free-flowing conversations has surprised even their designers and some of the leading experts in the field.There is a growing view among some thinkers that as AI becomes even more intelligent, the lights will suddenly turn on inside the machines and they will become conscious.