"The guys at Imperial College, London have finally created a machine which they claim is "conscious". The device, which is a program running on a powerful laptop computer, is called Magnus. According to Prof Igor Aleksander, the computer can learn, reason and exert free-will whilst exploring the world that has been created for it in its memory. It currently has no idea of the outside world, having no eyes or ears, but maybe one day it'll get fed up and go on holiday (via the internet, of course)."
[Sunday telegraph, 15th Dec 1996]