Briefing Chat: Baby T. rex were killers from birth, suggest new fossils

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AI Safety in London

1:31Hello and welcome to the Briefing Chat podcast, the Friday show where we talk about a couple of articles that have been highlighted in the Nature Briefing, Nature's daily email newsletter of the latest science news. I'm your host, Nick Petrichow, and joining me today is Lizzie Gibney. Lizzie, how's it going? Hi, Nick. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for coming on. And, you know, I've got a very interesting story, I think, this week to tell everyone

2:02about. But I know you've got maybe even more than one to talk to me about. Tell me what you are most interested to talk to me about this week. Well, I'll start with the story that I wrote. A little bit of bias in there. It's a story on how London is becoming an AI capital of the world, but a very specific one, kind of AI safety is something that London is like carving out a niche in. So you might remember the mythos model from Anthropic from a month or two ago. That was like the most powerful model that was released. And there were all these fears about hacking happening because it was so good at breaking

2:35cybersecurity. But it actually took like a London organization, the AI Security Institute based in London, checking it out, evaluating it before the whole world's researchers said, actually, yeah, this is quite worrying, but maybe not as worrying as some people have said. And so this institute has kind of gathered steam and is the best resource of this type in the world. And it's got loads of really good researchers working there as well, which is quite hard to do as a government body. And so, yeah, the story is about how London is kind of carving out this little niche for

3:05itself. So is this institute, I guess, sort of like a centre of mass that is attracting other things with its gravity? That's exactly right. So, I mean, London, when we think about London and AI already, like deep mind is probably what springs to mind. So that was founded here and crucially stayed here, even when it got taken over by Google. But now, like if you go walking around King's Cross, which is where nature is also based, there's going to be an anthropic office, open AI. There's all these other kind of smaller organizations, and they're all based here in King's Cross. They're calling it the knowledge quarter.

3:35And some of them are quite specific to AI. So there's also Apollo Research, which does a lot of work into scheming. Have you heard that word? It's like when models effectively try and, I don't like using the anthropomorphic language, but to deceive, you know, the people running it. They do things that they are not supposed to. And Apollo Research tests for that. And there's Gov.ai, which was a spin out from the University of Oxford. So there's kind of like a long history of responsible AI research, ethical AI research happening in London. And it's now booming. Does this present any issues, though?

4:06Because, you know, when you think about the big tech companies, you think of California, obviously, it's a long way away. So does it work having a AI safety capital in London? It seems to. I think there's actually an advantage in that being outside of that Silicon Valley bubble, there is just maybe a bit less hype over here in the UK. Like there's a different lens on how people view AI. That was the feedback that I got when I wrote this story. But what I would also say is this kind of long history that the UK has of AI safety research has kind of now got a Silicon Valley gloss on it, though.

4:39So to go back ancient terms in AI, 2023 was when Rishi Sunak, who was then Prime Minister about 12 Prime Ministers ago. So you might not remember that either. He had this AI safety summit. It was the first one that had happened. And again, that was kind of putting forward the UK's pedigree on AI safety research. But since then, obviously, Trump has come in. And that's put a very different slant on the kinds of things that people are thinking about when they think about AI safety. And it's now very much about security. It's about cybersecurity. It's about not developing bioweapons. It's about national security.

5:10Like, how can we stop these frontier models from doing really dangerous things? And that's not really what are the only impacts of these models, as we as everyday people who use them know. You know, there are psychological potential issues. There have been many, many cases of AI psychosis. There's how it's affecting education, the justice system, exacerbating inequality. And all of those things kind of come under this idea of ethical AI or safety in AI. And that's not what's being tackled. So it's kind of great that we have somewhere that is taking AI safety seriously and is kind

5:45of flourishing in that way. But I would say it's not doing the whole job. We're kind of we've got this kind of Silicon Valley idea of what AI safety should be about. And do you think that will be something that they look into in the future? Or how do you see this progressing? It seems that very much because of the geopolitical situation that we're in, it seems like that is the direction we're going to stay in. So, for instance, the AI Security Institute used to be called the AI Safety Institute, but it changed its name. So I think this direction that we're in for now is what's going to continue.

6:15But there is room for companies, you know, like, as I say, everyday people are using this. And we want assurance that if you're using an AI agent, it's not going to leak all your data. It's not going to crash your computer. Like, there are lots of ways where using AI can go awry. And that's maybe an opportunity for companies to spring up that try and help other companies and the public to make themselves safe while using AI. So that is also something that is growing up a little bit here. So maybe that's a way forward. But is this sort of centre of gravity being in London enough?

6:46Is there more that needs to be done to ensure AI safety? There are a lot of conversations happening about regulation of AI. So the European Union has an AI Act. In this country, in the UK, we kind of have AI regulated by all the existing bodies that already regulate, like communications and things like that. The United States has had a very hands-off approach. So I think there is a lot more room for a lot more to be done. And that's going to have to happen on top of and separate from things like this AI Security Institute. We're not beating the stereotype here in the UK that we love health and safety,

7:19by the sounds of it then. No, and I would say, unfortunately not in this case. We could do with a bit more health and safety when it comes to AI. For sure. Well, I've got a story this week, which is not really about health and safety at all. In fact, this is about people maybe throwing themselves into danger. So this is a story about how some ancient Egyptian princesses were maybe kicking some ass. And it was a story I was reading in Scientific American, based on a study in frontiers in environmental archaeology. That's amazing. How do we know about that?

7:49Well, the thing is, we've not known about it for a long time, because as is sometimes the way of archaeology, the bones of these princesses have sat basically unlooked at for more than 130 years in the basement of the Cairo Museum. But what researchers did when they were rediscovered, quote unquote, in 2020, is like, oh, we could look at their bones, do some analysis and make some suggestions about what they were doing with their lives. And when they did so, the bones suggested that these princesses were, you know, maybe using

8:21weapons, maybe doing archery and that sort of thing, which challenges the sort of long held belief that they were, you know, doing more sedentary things, sitting around being pampered, that sort of thing. That's amazing that you can learn, like, really tangible things about their lives and, like, the social structures they lived in, like, from their bones. Well, there is an important caveat here. It is an interpretation. And one of the researchers interviewed in this article disagrees with that interpretation and says there isn't enough evidence to do this.

8:51So the way that this works is you look at the bones and you look at muscle attachments. So this is where the muscles are attaching to the bones. And based on, like, what people were doing over the course of their lives, you can then make inferences on what they were doing. So, like, if the surface area where the muscle is attached has become bigger, it may be that the muscles were being used a lot. However, it could just be that lives in general were more strenuous then. So the researcher, who was a bit sceptical, said it would be good to compare these bones

9:23against non-elite people and see, like, what they were doing as well before we jumped to the conclusion that perhaps these princesses were going out and, you know, slaughtering their enemies or whatever it was. But I guess the problem is we don't have as well-preserved bodies, right, for everyday people. Like, they cared about the princesses. They probably had a nice burial and whatnot. Yeah, I mean, I think that is broadly true. And, you know, these were princesses. They were given a bit more special treatment. But it is an interesting reinterpretation of the past and if it holds up. And the other thing that they found with these princesses, well, is lots of weapons.

9:57And historically, that's always been thought that that was ceremonial. Whereas, in fact, the researchers behind this new study are saying that perhaps it could be that, you know, these were their weapons. So it does open the door to a lot more questions about what we have thought about the past. I love that because I guess it was probably just an assumption for a long time, wasn't it? That because they're princesses, because they were women, they probably weren't out there fighting. But actually, there's no reason to think that they weren't using those weapons themselves. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, one of the researchers behind this work said that this interpretation,

10:31was often based on outdated gender stereotypes that restricted martial activities to the male sphere. And this could imply that the picture is actually a little bit more complicated. But yeah, I think there'll be a little bit more analysis to be done before we can necessarily make that judgment. But certainly, it seems that these princesses maybe weren't as sedentary as one's fault. Message to us all is to think carefully about what we're buried with. Exactly. It will be used in interpretations thousands of years from now.

Ancient Egyptian Princesses

10:58Exactly. Like if I'm buried with a podcast mic, they can probably make a good assumption about what I was doing with my life. I love it. Well, my final story that I wanted to squeeze in actually has a lot of parallels. We are widely extrapolating from a bone that is even more ancient. And this is a story in Discover magazine based on a paper in the Journal of Biology. So this is a foot bone from a baby T-Rex, right? So we haven't actually had many baby T-Rex fossils. But researchers, again, looking through some old collections, they identified the first

11:31known fossils of like hatchling Tyrannosaurus rex. So like think about kind of cat size, like a few kilograms. And just from this tiny foot bone, they learn a lot. So there's a CT scan of it. And they found, first of all, that its age didn't have many growth rings. And they're kind of caused a bit like a tree, like when you have a pause, you have like a lean period, you have a pause in growth and then it starts again and you get a growth ring. Well, these didn't have any, so they can't have been very old. But they had loads of blood vessels, which suggests that it was already very active and running about.

12:01And researchers already knew that baby T-Rexes, they'd found teeth that were quite worn down, which also suggests that they were kind of already gnawing on the bones of animals. So yeah, this study, they were able to figure out that basically, from the get go, a baby T-Rex was pretty terrifying.

12:22It may have been small, but it was probably running around and it was probably biting and killing things, or at least gnawing on bones. Well, but do we know that, for instance, it wasn't their parents bringing back things for them to eat or something like that? It was definitely the babies doing it? We don't know, I suppose, that it was catching its own food, but we do know that it was very active. That's what the abundance of these blood vessels and canals kind of suggests. So we know that it was doing something that was highly metabolic. So maybe they were just, you know, going along for the ride on the hunt.

12:52That's also possible. Another detail that they found was about the number of eggs that a T-Rex would have. So it's something like 20 or 30. And again, I love that from a detail like this, you can actually learn a lot. So the number that they had suggests that they wouldn't have just abandoned their eggs. So you know, like how turtles go and just have hundreds of eggs on a beach and they're like, go, my babies, you know, good luck.

13:17Maybe a few of you survive. They probably weren't doing that. But at the same time, 20, 30 eggs, they probably weren't like investing a lot in them either because that's a lot. They probably expected a lot not to make it. So what I loved in this story was that they said T-Rex probably had a light touch parenting.

13:33That's a nice way to put it. They were involved, but they also had enough eggs that, you know, some didn't make it. That's probably fine. Well, I guess the T-Rex parents weren't something to necessarily emulate there, but that's still really interesting. Thank you so much for bringing that one and your other story to the briefing podcast this week, Lizzie. I think that's all we've got time for, though. So for now, I'll say if you were interested in those stories and you'd like to learn more about them, we'll put some links in the show notes. And we'll also put a link to the Nature Briefing where you can sign up to our newsletter and

14:05get more stories like that daily to your inbox. And if you'd like to stay in touch with us, you can. We are on email, podcast at nature.com. Or you can find us on social media at Nature Podcast. I'm Lizzie Gibney. And I'm Nick Patrick-Hall. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

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