Award-winning journalist. Fmr BBC News Science Editor and European Internet Journalist of the Year, NASA/ESA, Jodrell Bank. Asteroid Whitehouse orbits the Sun.
Hampshire, England.
Joined February 2009
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Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
This month an AI model produced hundreds of new results in maths and theoretical computer science. A group of mathematicians called for a boycott. Pope Leo XIV stressed the distinction between humans and AI.
What happens when capabilities we thought uniquely human are demonstrated by something that isn't human?
David Whitehouse asks whether the first alien intelligence we meet could be a machine. We may be building something that challenges us in similar ways.
For uNHIdden, this is about ontological shock: how people and societies cope when fundamental assumptions about the world are challenged.
Preparing for non-human intelligence may also mean preparing for transformative AI.
spectator.com/article/the-fi…
#OntologicalShock #AI #uNHIdden
@drdwhitehouse
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
BBC managers have endless meetings where they exchange fashionable banalities about the coverage. Editors could make a simple change.. let discussions/ interviews breathe. They could do this with fewer producers nervously filling slots fearful of ‘missing’ fleeting stories
at the end of the Today programme @debmattinson and @CamCavendish were asked for their opinions on the Budget. Neither had more than two minutes to eithrr answer Nick Ribinson's questions or to share their wisdom. Such a waste of the BBC's ability to get such seasoned thinkers together. Listeners were teased but not really fed. if public service broadcasting is to be an alternative to our soundbite culture rather than its echo it needs to have fewer but longer slots so ideas can both be propogated and probed. More of a heaothy meal and less of a quick sugar rush. More like Walden was. Not a speed-date. Like Today, Sunday with Kuennsbwrg also has too many guests. I'm not optinistic that today's BBC has the residual intellectual confidence to be less scattergun and thanks to podcasts there are now multiplying places that are filling the vacuum.
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
Too many public sector press offices assume that it's a journalist's job to publish their – biased – press release in its entirety.
Police press offices are notorious for this.
Amazing: journalist does journalism to discover something, and because everyone is so used to people living by press release, they literally can't believe the journalist found it out on their own.
holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/…
Twas ever thus.
Amazing: journalist does journalism to discover something, and because everyone is so used to people living by press release, they literally can't believe the journalist found it out on their own.
holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/…
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
We understand how computers work from the bottom to the top. But the same cannot be said for our new digital creations.
✍️ David Whitehouse
Article: trib.al/95pwyPy
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
The math world is shocked. Some are saying that this year marks the beginning of the modern age of math.
✍️ David Whitehouse
Article: trib.al/CHJaFlH
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
"This is at least ten times, perhaps 100 times as momentous as the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem,” said Abhishek Saha, professor of mathematics at Queen Mary University of London. Joshua Gans of the University of Toronto went further: “This is probably the biggest day of scientific advancement in history"
spectator.com/article/the-fi…
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
Where this power is taking us is exhilarating and frightening. AI is coming for all of science. It's already produced catalogues of potentially medically useful molecules and is giving us a new understanding of mysterious genetic tracts in the human genome.
The Chinese AI-Newton model has already determined, from scratch, Newton's second law of motion, the law of gravity and the basis for some of Einstein's theories. Biologists are excited about an initiative to develop a digital simulation of a cell, life's most basic building block.
Perhaps we can look forward to when AI develops new concepts by linking disparate areas of study into a new paradigm like the mathematician Ed Witten did when he used quantum mechanics to revolutionize geometry, or when Paul Samuelson took ideas from thermodynamics to transform economics.
✍️ David Whitehouse
Article | spectator.com/article/the-fi…
I’ve known some great managers in my time at the BBC, and I’ve known some terrible ones. Poor management has long been the BBC’s problem, especially during cutback times, which it has been the past 30 years!
I've often thought that the BBC is the architect of its own failures and management idiocies due to wilful neglect across the board. This piece by David L is once again proof @drdwhitehouse @philmcraig
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
Russia is a declining space power and watches the growing military space prowess of China and the US with alarm.
✍️ David Whitehouse
Article: trib.al/u0L32N1
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
In a provocative and unprecedented act over the past two days a Russian military "inspector" satellite has been maneuvering closer and closer to a US-registered, European-built, all-weather earth observation satellite that provides data vital for Ukraine’s war effort.
It is the first time non-consensual close proximity action has been carried out in low-Earth orbit between two satellites. It has alarmed Western space war fighters who see it as a hostile demonstration of future orbital conflict.
There can be no doubt of the intent of the mission which must have been planned for some time. On April 16 Russia launched six satellites from its Plesetsk launch site some 500 miles north of Moscow. They were given generic designations Cosmos 2609 – 2614.
✍️ David Whitehouse
Article | spectator.com/article/putin-…
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
At just 18, Japanese classical guitarist Haruna Miyagawa performs Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in a guitar arrangement. Originally written for violin, this celebrated piece is known for its intricate variations, complex arpeggios, and demanding technical challenges
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
HAROLD PINTER — born 96yrs ago today — writes to his old friend Tom Stoppard in 2001.
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
The University of Manchester is seeking alternative funding sources to keep scientific work at Jodrell Bank going after hearing that lost UK Research and Innovation funding would not be restored despite interventions by the prime minister #research #Jodrell
timeshighereducation.com/new…
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
These cuts will turn some of the BBC's most loyal audience into an actively hostile and dismissive one. BBC leaders have made it clear their business is chasing fads & throwing away bread and butter Reithian progs - impossible to claim universal funding on this basis
BBC to cut raft of Radio 4 programmes including You and Yours bbc.in/473sVLE
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
More than a little unfortunate that the BBC Radio 4 programmes now being axed are mostly about intelligent thought and discussion. Why on earth would we want programmes like that. Obviously two-a-penny already.
Sorry to inform you that @BBCFreeThinking (and Thinking Allowed) have been cancelled as part of cost-saving measures. Last show will go out in April. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmly…
Dr David Whitehouse retweeted
I’m sorry to say the BBC is committing multiple acts of self-harm. Current senior management do not seem to understand that in the changing media landscape the BBC should still be providing content the commercial sector is unwilling or unable to invest in.
Sorry to inform you that @BBCFreeThinking (and Thinking Allowed) have been cancelled as part of cost-saving measures. Last show will go out in April. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmly…