I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
bernard
How do you go about getting the 10 dollars ?
Jane McG
So weird– McDonald’s is actually (purportedly) unaffiliated with this initiative. If you visit the site, the host explains that they are a basically a new Web 2.0 company testing their beta app. I suppose they are using McDonald’s as a “test client” without actually being paid or officially engaged by the company. The motto of the company “anyone can go viral” is interesting… an attempt to formalize an approach to viral marketing, which to date has been very hit or miss. (Do something weird or crazy, hope it gets attention, and then fan the flames of the blogosphere…)
Jill
Jane, I hadn’t actually noticed that – I guess I blogged it kind of fast… But you’re quite right – the campaign is by Creamaid which is a company that just opened their beta a couple of weeks ago. They’ve set up four “test conversations” with different royalty levels to test the system I guess. You also get a “referral fee” if someone else clicks your widget and “joins the conversations” (i.e. blogs about the product) through the system.
Will be interesting to see how this works out – personally I feel like my blog would be sort of sullied if I did it, and I don’t like McDonalds either, but it does seem like a more honest way of doing viral marketing than just spamming discussion fora as Coca Cola did recently.
nick
Jill, you forgot to post your photo.
Jill
Oh no, now I won’t get my ten dollars!!! Heh.
Jane McG
Jill– agreed on both counts… I would only feel good about participating in this kind of marketing if I really loved the product. For instance, I would be more than happy to put up a Creamaid conversation post/gadget on my blog about the weekly Battlestar Galactica episodes, or about the new DDR game, or anything else that I would want to support and felt was at least a little relevant to my blog topic and audience. Other items would feel way icky. At the same time,yes, yes, yes– way better to have this level of transparency than secret buzz marketing or fake-persona forum posting. I’m not sure this would actually work to generate buzz, but at least it’s fairly open. I like that.
jill/txt » PayPerPay: a sneakier kind of blog advertising
[…] It turns out there are plenty of sites like Creamaid, which I wrote about the other day, out there. PayPerPost is one of the biggest, so I signed up to see what it’s like. And um, also because one of the featured “opportunities” was writing about World of Warcraft and you’d get $3 for a post on that, the front page said, and hey, I already write about World of Warcraft all the time. Like Creamaid, the deal is you write about requested topics and are paid from three to ten dollars for your post. Once you’re signed up you get access to all the “opportunities”. Currently there are about a hundred – but to my slight distress I couldn’t find the write-about-WoW “opportunity”. Others varied in their degree of detail. Some are very specific: The post should describe about culture and how marriage affects culture. It should cover the topics., 1) Is Marriage Really needed? 2) Asians gives more value to marriage, For example in India, I see that Online matrimonial Portals are making a great income. For example, i came across, Bharatmatrimony.com, It seems to be the leader of online Matrimonial services. 3) They try several innovative ideas, like, launching of the First matrimonial toolbar, Also Provides RSS feeds., Even yahoo has shown an interest on them and has invested in them. (https://payperpost.com/blogger/opportunity/detail/765) […]
Strategi p?• nett ‚Äì Schibsted vs r??kla « Arne Krokan
[…] Det er kanskje ikke ?• undres over at McDonalds for en tid tilbake kj??rte en reklamekampanje i USA der de ga 10 dollar til alle som tok bilde av burgeren sin, skrev om den p?• bloggen, og lenket tilbake til McDonalds eget nettsted. Ved ?• gi reklampengene direkte til forbrukerne selv, skaffet de seg b?•de gjenkj??p og ??kt synlighet p?• nettet. […]