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. […]
scott
Isn’t that really pretty simple basic interface stuff, pushing a square? I understand that it’s, well, sort of cool, but does that qualify as art? Does the fact that it’s a projected square, rather than, say, a play-dough square, make it art? The flower thing seems cool.
Jill
Well, if play-dough was a New Medium and we were still kind of anxious about the edges of this new kind of a thing and still spending whole conferences in defining what it was (imagine three keynotes on What Is Play-Dough) perhaps it would be art?
scott
I guess it just bothers me that we jump up and down whenever we see the computer do something that play-dough can do but put a bunch of words that we need to pay more than momentary attention to in the middle of the play-dough and suddenly it seems too complex to even bother reading.
Jill
I’ll play play-dough with you any day, Scott…
real icon
Doesn’t it also have something to do with expectations? I *expect* a play-dough square (or rather, cube, ball, piece, whatever) to be soft and mouldable. I do not anticipate that a square of light projected onto a wall reacts in almost the same manner. Events associated with a square of light: dia show, Power Point presentation, language classes (our Swedish teacher used an overhead projector quite frequently). Mostly situations involving a rather silent audience and a single person standing in front of it, giving a lecture.
vika
At first, I repeatedly read the title of the work as “Complaint”, which struck me as a decent one for it as well.