Elizabeth Gibney

AI-generated media must now carry labels in China | Digital Watch Observatory The Cyberspace Administration of China has rolled out wide-ranging AI transparency rules as part of its ongoing Qinglang campaign to clean up online content.

And in theory any videos made should come with a visible and invisible watermark. I’d be interested to know if they do! dig.watch/updates/ai-g...

China wants to lead the world on AI regulation — will the plan work? Having placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its own economic strategy, China is driving efforts to create an international system to govern the technology’s use.

I write a lot about AI and in AI policy circles I kept hearing one thing -- China is the country talking loudest about wanting to regulate the technology at a global level.

Here's my explainer on what that could look like
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This AI combo could unlock human-level intelligence Blending ‘old-fashioned’ logic systems with the neural networks that power large language models is one of the hottest trends in artificial intelligence.

Rather than just scaling, is it time to bring the neural networks behind LLMs together with old school rule-based 'symbolic' AI?

Lots of opportunities and challenges in this great story by @nicolakimjones.bsky.social 🧪🤖

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A robot pulls on ends of the thread containing a slipknot

In a gear change from my last few stories...by acting as a "mechanical fuse" this simple little slipknot, added to surgical thread, can radically improve how surgeons perform sutures & lead to better outcomes

A lovely intersection of mechanics, geometry and medicine 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This announcement brimmed with hype but at its heart are interesting qs - what if models could learn from high-end scientific (rather than everyday) data? And are there specific science Qs that AI can help?

Done well, AI for science yields amazing stuff (see AlphaFold). But done badly brings risks

Google DeepMind won a Nobel prize for AI: can it produce the next big breakthrough? The company was created to use AI for world- changing science — and achieved that with AlphaFold. But the advent of large language models raises deep questions about the future of DeepMind.

DeepMind has long been seen as the scientists' AI firm: focusing on ethics, publishing prolifically & tackling problems researchers want solved.

But since the advent of LLMs, the pace of AI has changed and commercial imperatives abound. Can DeepMind stay on top?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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This millimetre-size robot from @ethz.ch can be steered around the body in real time using magnetic fields.

Once it arrives at a blockage or tumour, it delivers its cargo of drug and dissolves. So far only in pigs and sheep; human trials are next.

My story here: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

'Tiny' AI model beats massive LLMs at logic test Technique could be used as a cheap way to boost ability of other AI models.

There was a lot of hubbub last month about this tiny, one-author model that beats some big LLMs on a prominent benchmark supposed to test intelligence (ARC-AGI).

Right now it mainly does sudokus, but could this technique eventually helps AI go beyond LLMs?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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This is pretty cool. How do you train an LLM? Yes but reeeeally how? This 200+ page (!) blog from @hf.co shows how to train a model from start to finish, bugs, warts & all. Loads of interesting details I hadn't thought about huggingface.co/spaces/Huggi...

I'm also not sure how exciting it is to do slightly better NMR - millions of dollars of hardware kind of exciting?

And, as is often in these quantum advantage claims, now that researchers will try to beef up classical calculations, the claim may not last long

What's cool? These QC measurements can tease out otherwise hard to get information & look suited to mapping onto NMR-type problems to reveal features of molecular structure. The studies are rigorous.

BUT the work is very proof of principle. "Showing promise" does not equate to "this will happen"

Google claims ‘quantum advantage’ again — but researchers are sceptical The firm says it has solved a problem on a quantum processor faster than a classical computer, and is optimistic about future scientific applications.

Another day, another claim of quantum advantage -- this time, with hints of (someday) doing something useful 🧪⚛️

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

with @shannonvallor.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social @williamis.bsky.social

Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Turing Test YouTube video by The Royal Society

It was packed with AI royalty (& a sprinkling of IRL celebs) & an excellent overview what the world is getting right (& wrong) on AI. One point shone through -- in striving for AGI we might be getting AI very wrong

You can still watch the whole event here: www.youtube.com/live/GmnBTCK...

AI language models killed the Turing test: do we even need a replacement? Chatbots now ace the mathematician's famous imitation game, but imitation never equalled intelligence.

Where do the world famous LLM sceptic @garymarcus.bsky.social & his bud Laurence Fishburne (AKA Morpheus) like to hang out? The Royal Society of course! 🧪🤖

Here's my write up from @unisouthampton.bsky.social's Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Turing Test event www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI bots wrote and reviewed all papers at this conference Event will assess how reviews by models compare with those written by humans.

Next week @jameszou.bsky.social & colleagues will host a conference where all the papers are written by AI agents & reviewed by them too.

What do you reckon? A good chance to put AIs through their paces? Or a way to divert AI slop from elsewhere? 🧪🤖

My story here:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists lose jobs and grants as US government shutdown takes a toll Hundreds of people at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have received layoff notices, and work at many federal laboratories has been suspended.

Not common to see a 7-byline story in the wild, but that's what the situation calls for when the government shuts down and every science agency needs to be checked in on for RIFs, grant terminations, and general dysfunction.

Our update on what the chaos means for science here:

AI models that lie, cheat and plot murder: how dangerous are LLMs really? Tests of large language models reveal that they can behave in deceptive and potentially harmful ways. What does this mean for the future?

I'm pretty sceptical about 'AI scheming', as it's so easy to anthropomorphise & experiments often involve telling the AI to do the bad thing they end up doing.

To understand what's behind the hype, read this smart & sober overview from@silverjacket.bsky.social 🧪🤖

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Over at @naturepodcast.bsky.social we also made a super short vid on this year's physics Nobel Prize. Quantum phenomena at the macroscopic scale in two minutes... go! With me, and Ben Thompson & camera work by the fab @emzywb.bsky.social 🧪⚛️

www.youtube.com/shorts/krita...

Groundbreaking quantum-tunnelling experiments win physics Nobel John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis discovered quantum physics on a macroscopic scale, paving the way for quantum computing.

John Martinis’ wife didn’t wake him in the middle of the night (California time) to tell him he had won a Nobel. “I got up a little bit before 6. Then I opened my computer and saw John and Michel’s and my pictures."
Story by @lizziegibney.bsky.social and me

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A scientist’s guide to AI agents — how could they help your research? Researchers are increasingly turning to artificial-intelligence tools that can handle complex, multi-step processes.

Have you heard loads about "AI agents", but have little idea what they are, what they can do for researchers and whether to believe the hype? Then this is for you! 🧪🤖https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03246-7

Is there a reason we picked this slightly terrifying still? 🤣

News Intern, Nature News Job Title: News Intern, Nature News Location: Washington, D.C or New York — Hybrid Working Application Deadline: October 15, 2025 About Springer Nature Springer Nature is one of the leading publishers...

Nature's news team is now recruiting for our paid US intern position for January to June 2026. It's a great opportunity to come join our team & publish important stories 🧪
Apply by 16 Oct springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/SpringerNatu...

HSBC claims quantum trading breakthrough Europe’s largest lender tested a tool developed by IBM on bond market data

I'm sure there's valuable science in there but experts I consulted were not super convinced by the paper (why does it work better with noise? Why didn't they compare to the best available classical algo?) We won't cover it. Alas others already have&without outside comment www.ft.com/content/d9d4...

HSBC unleashes yet another “qombie”: a zombie claim of quantum advantage that isn’t Today, I got email after email asking me to comment on a new paper from HSBC—yes, the bank—together with IBM. The paper claims to use a quantum computer to get a 34% advantage in predic…

I was going to post a rant about the perils of quantum computing hype, following the claim by #HSBC & #IBM that they have improved bond market predictions using a QC, but instead I will just link to Scott Aaronson's blog which says it all scottaaronson.blog?p=9170 🧪⚛️ cc @bullshitquantum.bsky.social

Also read @helenpearson.bsky.social & @heidiledford.bsky.social's excellent story unpicking the origins of Trump's paracetamol/autism claims www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This quote sums it up: "We do not think that taking acetaminophen is in any way contributing to actually causing autism"

Bring us your LLMs: why peer review is good for AI models Deepseek’s R1 model has been peer reviewed. Others should follow the firm’s example.

And here's Nature's take on why more AI developers should follow suit and put their LLMs through the peer review wringer. The process is far from perfect, but it seems a valuable counterbalance against AI hype and good for clarity & safety www.nature.com/articles/d41...

DeepSeek-R1 incentivizes reasoning in LLMs through reinforcement learning - Nature A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing t...

The paper is here -- and kudos to #deepseek for going through the peer review process for such a cutting edge, general model www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The peer review exchanges with 8 external experts (linked from the paper) are well worth a read

Secrets of DeepSeek AI model revealed in landmark paper First peer reviewed study shows how a Chinese start-up firm made the market-shaking LLM for US$300,000.

Remember DeepSeek's R1 model that crashed the US stock market in Jan? DeepSeek has said it did not boost the model by training on OpenAI outputs. This and much more (eg $$ to train & technical details) revealed in the firm's peer reviewed paper out in Nature today 🧪🤖 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The top line is we're never going to get rid of hallucinations as it's just the way LLMs are built: they're not understanding, they're guessing based on stats. But maybe LLMs can be better fine-tuned to sound less confident, so humans aren't so taken in by them & use them more appropriately?