内容摘要：The force said it "acknowledged the significant impact that crimes of this nature have on victims and the worry it can cause to the wider community".

The force said it "acknowledged the significant impact that crimes of this nature have on victims and the worry it can cause to the wider community".

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.

Others, such as Prof Anil Seth who leads the Sussex University team, disagree, describing the view as "blindly optimistic and driven by human exceptionalism"."We associate consciousness with intelligence and language because they go together in humans. But just because they go together in us, it doesn't mean they go together in general, for example in animals."

So what actually is consciousness?

The short answer is that no-one knows. That's clear from the good-natured but robust arguments among Prof Seth's own team of young AI specialists, computing experts, neuroscientists and philosophers, who are trying to answer one of the biggest questions in science and philosophy.Workers had to tip the smouldering waste on to the road to enable it to be safely extinguished, following advice from firefighters, a Leeds city Council spokesperson said.

Mohammed Rafique, executive member for environment, said incorrectly discarded rubbish can cause "danger to our crews and staff, damaged vehicles and inconvenience for residents".No workers were hurt during the fires and the bin lorries, roads and nearby properties were not damaged.

The mess at each location was cleared up as quickly as possible, a council spokesperson said.But the incidents did cause extra expense and inconvenienced neighbours and drivers, they added.