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. […]
Eirik
Scary stuff, this – Salon had a story on this a while ago, as well. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but actually there’s a brilliant Australian alternative to the American system. Wired covered it in depth in november last year – http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html . What makes eVACS (Electronic Voting and Counting System) a vast improvement on the commercial US systems, is the fact that it’s based on Open Source software. Anyone can download the voting machine source code (from http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html ) and check it for bugs and possible back doors. According to Wired, one Aussie academic did actually spot a serious bug, which goes to show that the system works.
Sooner or later we will have to run large-scale electronic voting trials here in Norway as well. Perhaps we should make a case for using a translated/localized version of eVACS? 🙂
Jill
Oh yes! No, I didnn’t know that, Eirik, thanks! Now that’s a really important point: democracy should be transparent, and open source voting software’s a very sensible idea.
Insane, the money made on elections some places.