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. […]
Beernd
It’s awful. But who said life is fair…? Perhaps she should know it isn’t. Not this way, of course, please not this way…
vika
We had horror stories in school long before our parents started speaking honestly to us.
Scott
Now that I think of it, I learned about this type of stuff in school well before my parents talked to us about them. I remember playing “Vietnam War” with the kids outside, although I didn’t really get it. When I was eleven or twelve, the first person killed in the Tyelnol Murders was Mary Kellerman, a girl in my year at grammar school. We’d been in first grade together. There were camera crews all over the playground. And then of course, a whole generation of American kids was watching when when the first Space Shuttle exploded. I wonder how much worse it is now. The media is certainly more pervasive, and the images more graphic, and in the case of what went down in Russia, the scale more horriffic, but our innocence is always getting eaten away by the evening news. Having said that, I hate to think of the nightmares your daughter could get from that story. Luckily, the actual terror is likely to stay a long way from Bergen.
dr. b.
If you choose not to tell her about it before school you may want to decide what you will say to her if she hears about it at school. This tragedy could make younger children afraid to go to school.
aldahlia
As a kid we played “AIDS tag” and the rumor that spread through my third grade class was that orange clouds at sunset meant that a nuclear bomb had gone off in Russia. I don’t think that there’s anyway to protect schoolchildren from thier own inventions and gossip about world events.
Marika
I remember turning of radios and avoiding TV during the news. I was 6-7 years old and terrified of war. I had nightmares. There’s no good way of trying to explain the terror in Beslan to children. Or the terror, the wars, the famines or disasters anywhere in the world. But trying to is good.
bicyclemark
I have no children… except my inner child… but I still think you should talk about it.
Jill
I’m not telling her. There will be plenty of time for understanding the world, there will be and there are already plenty of times when she’s already heard and needs to talk about it. And perhaps children actually are SUPPOSED to deal with these things by playing AIDS tag, War in Iraq, Vietnam War or believing that orange sunsets mean t a nuclear bomb had exploded in Russia.
Don’t worry, I’ll keep listening to her. Thanks for your stories.