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. […]
Mattias
huh? in a poetic mood these days? Flames and red autum leaves…
Jill
Oh Mattias, I have many moods, and poetic is often one of them. What’s your mood? The “huh” sounds rather sarcastic and dismissal to me, as though you think poetic moods should be kept under lock and key, at least in a weblog – did you mean it that way? Or am I over-interpreting here?
mcb
Wow, burning letters. That’s very cathartic. There’s a few letters I’d like to burn, but I can’t quite face sorting through them.
Francois Lachance
French newsprint… that’s paper produced in France or paper printed with French??
Between a Huh and a Wow… intersting in how Mattias reads or rather reports top down in the order of a scrolling (flames to leaves) when in narrative terms the entries would provide a diegesis that reads from bottom up (leaves to flames). Very interesting in the metonymic drift that mcb triggers with the reference to “letters” which of course could be the letters on the printed page or missives of the epistolary sort or, as in my initial reading of that comment, a game of trying to write with selected letters missing from the alphabet.
And for some poetic reason I find myself wanting to produce a vowel interchange Mattias’s U for mcb’s O: WUW HOH
Another game with Wow and Huh:
Which combo resists information degradation the most? Scribble on paper or create a print out. Burn. The one with the most symmetry is readable upside down and even a charred bit of it goes a long way in the interpreation of dreams…
Jill
Francois, you are a very skilled reader, you always have such astute comments!
I meant newspapers from France, and letters that once were in envelopes, but I like your possible meanings just as well. The polyvalence (which I hadn’t thought of) in the word letters is far more interesting than my original idea.
Writing without some letters, burning letters of the alphabet and then not being able to use them for writing, wow!
As for the catharsis, yes, but as with so much bravado you pay for it afterwards with post-catharthic hangover.
Or maybe it’s just autumn with its darkening days that’s getting to me… 😉
Francois Lachance
What a very suggestive phrase: “post-catharthic hangover”! I really like the subtle repetition of the “th” sound after the voiced dental “t” — sure to trip up those that are not careful 🙂
[Aside: makes me wonder about the nuances between those that write/speak about “blogosphere” and those that prefer to reference “blogsphere”. ]
Liz Lawley also has been posting verbal and visual combinations that play with the theme of light [a sunset viewed from an office window] and psychological states.
http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/20/recalcitrant_reentry_into_reality.php
Both of you have me thinking of connections between weblog writing and catharsis and the culture of the Cathars. Something about the heresey of healing …
Jill
Ooh, and thanks to Lozano-Hemmer I even know who the Cathars are, they’re thirteenth century dualist heretics – but does their name have anything to do with catharsis?
I like the double th too, though I suppose it’s not really correct, strictly speaking.
Francois Lachance
Jill
You mean Rafael Lozano-Hemmer? If you get a chance, please blog the connection to Cathar.
On Anne Galloway’s blog, I had the pleasure and the opportunity, the pleasurable opportunity, of introducting your double “th” “post-catharthic hangover” term as a response to Andrew writing about “semiotic-and-after baggage”
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2003_10_01_blogger_archives.php#106675089865111515
I think the double “th” is euphoniously correct. And is a wonderful trip cord for those that would too speedily appropriate the phrase.
Jill
Yes, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – the link in my comment above goes to my recent post about his work Two Origins, which uses texts from the Cathars.
Francois Lachance
OOO
Talk about missing the obvious. I hadn’t caught the hyperlink. I missed the different colour. A temporary colour blindness (induced by reading Liz Lawley’s entry on the color picker)? See the links report at her entry: http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/22/color_picker_site.php
OO
or talk about a rapid read intake. I recall strolling through, catching the intriguing picutre, noting the direction of the walking figures (away from the text) and not immersing myself in reading the verbal text of the entry yet there is a feeling of overdetermination in the proximity of “catharthis” and “Cathar” that is semantic as well as sonorous. See Liz Lawley on the placement of images in relation to verbal elements http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/10/20/recalcitrant_reentry_into_reality.php
After reading Jill’s entry on Rafael Lozano-Hemmer the two-ness of the theme comes to the fore even more.
O
Anothor example of expressing a wish that gets a response by someone point to what is already there …. It is revisiting and re-interacting with a site that led one commentator to discover Anne Galloway’s shutter effect in the redesign of her site which picks up the shutters depicted in the background image.
http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/2003_10_01_blogger_archives.php#106668432761145628
Mum
It never occured to me that you would use those French newspapers I passed on to you to light such fires …