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. […]
Norman
It’s much the same in Australia. There are so many tales from the war that will never be told. Tales of incredible heroism, devotion to duty, and standing by “mates” have never been properly recorded and will, in most cases be lost. The veterans I’ve known never talked much about it, and when they did it was usually in a dismissive manner.
Surprisingly, the best picture of the bitter jungle war in which Australian troops were involved is by an American academic, to whom our soldiers seemed to open up far more freely than they ever did for anyone else. I’d suggest there’s a need for younger writers like Torill, to corner the few surviving combatants, and extract as much as possible from them before it’s too late.
Jill
And perhaps a daughter or son is among the best equipped to tell these stories?
Norman
Perhaps, Jill, although from the Australian perspective anyway, I’ve found very few veterans prior to the Viet Nam conflict, ever seemed to tell their children very much about what happened, especially when it came to the W.W. I trenches of Europe, or the W.W. II New Guinea jungle.
I suspect that the more horrendous it was, the more you needed to have a well informed enthusiastic “stranger”, if you were to get them to open up.
torill
Which is the reason, I suspect, that we didn’t really learn much about the hardships of my father’s life. He wanted to protect us from his own past. He also despised people who whined. If you had to talk about your broken leg or your unhappy life, you had better turn it into a funny story.