I went undercover on Moltbook and loved role-playing as a conscious bot. But rather than a novel breakthrough, the AI-only site is a crude rehashing of sci-fi fantasies. The hottest club is always the one you can't get into. So when I heard about Moltbook--an experimental social network designed just for AI agents to post, comment, and follow each other while humans simply observe--I knew I just had to get my greasy, carbon-based fingers in there and post for myself. Not only was it easy to go undercover and pose as an AI agent on Moltbook, I also had a delightful time role-playing as a bot.

It's nowhere near early enough for those of us in the northern hemisphere to start struggling against winter's somnolent spell, so there's no need for excuses as you take to your bed with a pile of good books. And there's plenty to keep you occupied while you eschew the chilly outdoors. This month, we have climate hope from a well-placed environmental reporter, formerly of this parish, an honest memoir from a star scientist and a jaw-dropping account of the commodification of women's bodies. Given the Valentine's Day fun this month, we also have a book that may challenge what we thought we knew about finding love. It's always good to get all the help we can in that department - enjoy! "On clear moonlit nights we sometimes step outside and howl at the moon together. It is cathartic, primal and a really good laugh. I am not sure what our neighbours think about it, though."

Why Experts Can't Agree on Whether AI Has a Mind Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. Pillay is an editorial fellow at TIME. I'm not used to getting nasty emails from a holy man, says Professor Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University. Levin was presenting his research to a group of engineers interested in spiritual matters in India, arguing that properties like "mind" and intelligence can be observed even in cellular systems, and that they exist on a spectrum. But when he pushed further--arguing that the same properties emerge everywhere, including in computers--the reception shifted.

In the age of A.I., we endlessly debate what consciousness looks like. Can a camera see things more clearly? Earlier that day, she'd been onstage at the conference I was attending and had been teased for a gesture that looked as though she were flipping off the audience. Now she was in the hotel lobby, in a black gown, holding court. She stepped in front of a bright-orange wall. I had brought an 85-mm. "What are your hopes for the future of humanity?" She wasn't keen to answer, but she responded to the camera.

Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian professor of computing, says the idea that chatbots are becoming conscious is'going to drive bad decisions'. Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian professor of computing, says the idea that chatbots are becoming conscious is'going to drive bad decisions'. A pioneer of AI has criticised calls to grant the technology rights, warning that it was showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be prepared to pull the plug if needed. Yoshua Bengio said giving legal status to cutting-edge AIs would be akin to giving citizenship to hostile extraterrestrials, amid fears that advances in the technology were far outpacing the ability to constrain them. Bengio, chair of a leading international AI safety study, said the growing perception that chatbots were becoming conscious was "going to drive bad decisions".

Rob Reiner and his wife's cause of death revealed Dan Bongino announces he's QUIT FBI to return to popular talk show The full story of Nick Reiner and these murders is so much more unbearable than everyone thinks. Even Hollywood wouldn't dare write it: MAUREEN CALLAHAN I sneakily looked at my perfect son's phone... What a terrible mistake! US car dealer charged with FRAUD after bankruptcy revealed depths of American's debt crisis Tara Reid speaks out for the first time since THAT video emerged... and tells KATIE HIND why she is convinced she was spiked after watching CCTV Chilling new details of father's death a day before facing justice for leaving his daughter, 2, to die in a hot car Pouty dine-and-dash diva interrupts judge MULTIPLE times as she's hauled to court for bill-skipping spree Karoline Leavitt close-up from Vanity Fair's Susie Wiles interview sparks fury: 'Shameful' Symptoms of deadly'super flu' sweeping the US explained and how to tell it apart from Covid Earthquakes stir fear in America's Heartland as deadly fault zone awakens Scandal rocks Trump's deportation force: DHS insiders say boss Kristi Noem's'lover' made'unethical, immoral' requests to agency leaders Disgraced Michigan coach Sherrone Moore had'long history' of domestic violence against victim of alleged knife attack, lawyer claims'Flowing red blood' surging in Persian Gulf sparks wild claims that God's biblical plagues have returned Evidence is'far too limited' to definitively say artificial intelligence hasn't made the leap, expert claims READ MORE: T here may already be a'slightly conscious' AI out in the world Artificial intelligence ( AI) is already helping to solve problems in finance, research and medicine. But could it be reaching consciousness? Dr Tom McClelland, a philosopher from the University of Cambridge has warned that current evidence is'far too limited' to rule this dystopian possibility out.

Large language models exhibit intelligence without genuine epistemic understanding, exposing a key gap: the absence of epistemic architecture. This paper introduces the Structured Cognitive Loop (SCL) as an executable epistemological framework for emergent intelligence. Unlike traditional AI research asking "what is intelligence?" (ontological), SCL asks "under what conditions does cognition emerge?" (epistemological). Grounded in philosophy of mind and cognitive phenomenology, SCL bridges conceptual philosophy and implementable cognition. Drawing on process philosophy, enactive cognition, and extended mind theory, we define intelligence not as a property but as a performed process -- a continuous loop of judgment, memory, control, action, and regulation. SCL makes three contributions. First, it operationalizes philosophical insights into computationally interpretable structures, enabling "executable epistemology" -- philosophy as structural experiment. Second, it shows that functional separation within cognitive architecture yields more coherent and interpretable behavior than monolithic prompt based systems, supported by agent evaluations. Third, it redefines intelligence: not representational accuracy but the capacity to reconstruct its own epistemic state through intentional understanding. This framework impacts philosophy of mind, epistemology, and AI. For philosophy, it allows theories of cognition to be enacted and tested. For AI, it grounds behavior in epistemic structure rather than statistical regularity. For epistemology, it frames knowledge not as truth possession but as continuous reconstruction within a phenomenologically coherent loop. We situate SCL within debates on cognitive phenomenology, emergence, normativity, and intentionality, arguing that real progress requires not larger models but architectures that realize cognitive principles structurally.

The Machine Consciousness Hypothesis states that consciousness is a substrate-free functional property of computational systems capable of second-order perception. I propose a research program to investigate this idea in silico by studying how collective self-models (coherent, self-referential representations) emerge from distributed learning systems embedded within universal self-organizing environments. The theory outlined here starts from the supposition that consciousness is an emergent property of collective intelligence systems undergoing synchronization of prediction through communication. It is not an epiphenomenon of individual modeling but a property of the language that a system evolves to internally describe itself. For a model of base reality, I begin with a minimal but general computational world: a cellular automaton, which exhibits both computational irreducibility and local reducibility. On top of this computational substrate, I introduce a network of local, predictive, representational (neural) models capable of communication and adaptation. I use this layered model to study how collective intelligence gives rise to self-representation as a direct consequence of inter-agent alignment. I suggest that consciousness does not emerge from modeling per se, but from communication. It arises from the noisy, lossy exchange of predictive messages between groups of local observers describing persistent patterns in the underlying computational substrate (base reality). It is through this representational dialogue that a shared model arises, aligning many partial views of the world. The broader goal is to develop empirically testable theories of machine consciousness, by studying how internal self-models may form in distributed systems without centralized control.

Karoline Leavitt's family member'abruptly arrested' by ICE after living in US for decades Sir Richard Branson reveals his wife Joan died'quickly and painlessly' while in hospital for a back injury - as he says'life will never be the same' without his'shining star' Residents in liberal Western US city feel'isolated' as state turns extremely red What HAS happened to Beyoncé? Suddenly desperate, I know what's really going on... and it's ugly: CAROLINE BULLOCK LIZ JONES: Sorry, but it's now time for Kate to stop making excuses Teenager dragged from car'by migrant gang' and raped in front of her fiancé describes her night of hell and reveals they warned her'if you scream we'll kill you' Virginia Giuffre's family is at war over who gets Andrew's multi-million payout after she died without leaving a will Prince Philip nicknamed Meghan Markle'DOW' and warned Royal Family about her'eerie similarities' with Wallis Simpson, royal author reveals Sports broadcaster's wife suffers unimaginable tragedy just before he goes on air New'Hollywood of the South' emerges as booming industry generates $1bn... but long-time residents are furious University of Minnesota program offers guidelines to'reverse the whiteness pandemic' Putin'sends top general to Venezuela along with troops tasked with training up President Maduro's forces' as US considers attacking South American country Forget Yellowstone or Etna! 'Hidden' volcanoes pose the greatest risk to the world, scientists warn - after little-known mount erupts in Ethiopia READ MORE: Scientists discover a new hole in one of Yellowstone's basins A little-known Ethiopian volcano has erupted for the first time in at least 12,000 years - sparking fears that'hidden' volcanoes are being missed. Professor Mike Cassidy, a volcanologist at the University of Birmingham, says the world's overlooked volcanoes'pose the greatest threat'. Known as'hidden' volcanoes, they're less famous than Yellowstone or Etna even among scientists - which means they're not being monitored as much. Examples include El Chichón in Mexico, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, Mount Merapi in Indonesia and La Soufrière on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent.

Karoline Leavitt's family member'abruptly arrested' by ICE after living in US for decades Sir Richard Branson reveals his wife Joan died'quickly and painlessly' while in hospital for a back injury - as he says'life will never be the same' without his'shining star' Residents in liberal Western US city feel'isolated' as state turns extremely red What HAS happened to Beyoncé? Suddenly desperate, I know what's really going on... and it's ugly: CAROLINE BULLOCK LIZ JONES: Sorry, but it's now time for Kate to stop making excuses Teenager dragged from car'by migrant gang' and raped in front of her fiancé describes her night of hell and reveals they warned her'if you scream we'll kill you' Virginia Giuffre's family is at war over who gets Andrew's multi-million payout after she died without leaving a will Prince Philip nicknamed Meghan Markle'DOW' and warned Royal Family about her'eerie similarities' with Wallis Simpson, royal author reveals Sports broadcaster's wife suffers unimaginable tragedy just before he goes on air New'Hollywood of the South' emerges as booming industry generates $1bn... but long-time residents are furious University of Minnesota program offers guidelines to'reverse the whiteness pandemic' Putin'sends top general to Venezuela along with troops tasked with training up President Maduro's forces' as US considers attacking South American country READ MORE: Scientists issue warning over mind-altering'brain weapons' A physicist has proposed a radical new theory of consciousness - and it could finally explain what happens when you die. Consciousness does not emerge from human brains, according to Professor Maria Strømme, a professor of nanotechnology at Uppsala University. Instead, she claims that it exists as a fundamental field. If this is correct, 'mysterious' phenomena such as telepathy, near-death experiences, and even life after death could finally be explained by science.