内容摘要：Created by Bristol artist Alison Larkman, Mirrorbox plays messages from ME and long Covid patients explaining why a particular location is special to them, and why their condition means they cannot be there themselves.

Created by Bristol artist Alison Larkman, Mirrorbox plays messages from ME and long Covid patients explaining why a particular location is special to them, and why their condition means they cannot be there themselves.

The prevailing view in the tech sector is that LLMs are not currently conscious in the way we experience the world, and probably not in any way at all. But that is something that the married couple Profs Lenore and Manuel Blum, both emeritus professors at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, believe will change, possibly quite soon.According to the Blums, that could happen as AI and LLMs have more live sensory inputs from the real world, such as vision and touch, by connecting cameras and haptic sensors (related to touch) to AI systems. They are developing a computer model that constructs its own internal language called Brainish to enable this additional sensory data to be processed, attempting to replicate the processes that go on in the brain.

"We think Brainish can solve the problem of consciousness as we know it," Lenore tells the BBC. "AI consciousness is inevitable."Manuel chips in enthusiastically with an impish grin, saying that the new systems that he too firmly believes will emerge will be the "next stage in humanity's evolution".Conscious robots, he believes, "are our progeny. Down the road, machines like these will be entities that will be on Earth and maybe on other planets when we are no longer around".

David Chalmers – Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University – defined the distinction between real and apparent consciousness at a conference in Tucson, Arizona in 1994. He laid out the "hard problem" of working out how and why any of the complex operations of brains give rise to conscious experience, such as our emotional response when we hear a nightingale sing.Prof Chalmers says that he is open to the possibility of the hard problem being solved.

"The ideal outcome would be one where humanity shares in this new intelligence bonanza," he tells the BBC. "Maybe our brains are augmented by AI systems."

On the sci-fi implications of that, he wryly observes: "In my profession, there is a fine line between science fiction and philosophy".According to Mr Raghunandan from CREA, it would be relatively easy for the EU to give up Russian LNG imports.

"Fifty percent of their LNG exports are directed towards the European Union, and only 5% of the EU's total [LNG] gas consumption in 2024 was from Russia. So if the EU decides to completely cut off Russian gas, it's going to hurt Russia way more then it's going to hurt consumers in the European Union," he told the BBC.Experts interviewed by the BBC have dismissed

that the war with Ukraine will end if Opec brings oil prices down."People in Moscow are laughing at this idea, because the party which will suffer the most… is the American shale oil industry, the least cost-competitive oil industry in the world," Mr Milov told the BBC.