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. […]
Tore Vesterby
“You might as vell tell uz everizing. Vi know vere you live!”
On a more serious note, this is why I like the Google bar at the top of my Firefox. Crtl+K and a search and I’m getting strings via Google.com and not Google.dk, and if I click on their logo I get the English version. Hoorah!
It’s even wierder sitting on a Dansih OS installing an English program and getting all the Yes, No and Cancel buttons as Ja, Nej, Annuler. It makes me feel less international.
elzapp
I don’t use the google pages. I use google a lot, but I use it through the searchbox in my Firefox browser. Then I always get to the english google. That also resulted in that when other norwegians had trouble using google, due to a redirection loop (google.com -> google.no -> google.com) I never saw the problem before someone asked me if I had problems with google.
Gideon
http://www.google.com/ncr
Jill
Oh, so google.no and the redirect thing isn’t new? I usually use the google box in Firefox too – though I do quite often find myself at the google search page too. Perhaps that’s usually after having used the Firefox box and so I’ve gone to the English version.
Ah well.
Gina
Looks like it is new, actually:
Made in the shade
elzapp
Yes, its relatively new. The thing was, before Google launched the domain, google.no redirected to google.com. And google.com was updated a few days before google.no, so it redirected you back to google.no, and so it went on….
google rundt i evig runddans
Lilia
Google weblog says:
Is it true about sunglasses? If so would be interesting to know what someone without much online experience would think about Google.no 🙂
Lilia
Forgot closing tag 🙂 Last paragraph is mine and not from Google blog…
Jill
Google doesn’t mean sunglasses in Norwegian – it doesn’t mean anything. But there used to be a site called google.no that sold sunglasses, according to the article Elzapp linked to:
I don’t know the story but would imagine the sunglasses company bought the domain because they figured lots of people would go to google.no rather than because the word has anything to do with sunglasses.
Fixed your endquotetag, Lilia 🙂
LiL
This forcible google redirect really pissed me off when I was in Hungary last week. I hadn’t expected that it would – but it really irked me. I think I’m too used to googling in English and thinking my searches through in English and the country-specific page gets in the way of my process. I’d guess it has to do with more effective local advertising – but they could localize advertising without changing the main search interface you access from a given location, couldn’t they? Besides, I could only forgive someone for redirecting me to the Elmer Fudd-ese or Pig Latin or Klingon google pages…