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. […]
Gro
Mathias uses msn a lot. What i understand from him, is
that you choose identity, and you don’t have to give your real
name. But i presume that it is quite easy to get an innocent
child to give his/hers real name. What i know, is that
mathias belive that everybody is telling the thruth on msn. If
a grown-up for eksample goes on msn and says he is a pupil at
my sons school, that would be enough to make my son give out
personal information about himself. And that is quite scaring
to be honest. But mostly the children exchange adresses with
each other, so they know who they invite in to the msn-chat.
And mathias also blocks adresses he doesn’t want to chat with.
There are a lot of sleazy people trying to get in contact with
these children, but you must either have faith in the children’s
ability to judge, or ban the whole thing.That’s the only
solution i think. It’s a lovely tool for communication, but
there are advantages and disadvantages here, as it is with all
new technology. But children are more clever than we think. Or
i like to think so 🙂
Elin
I’ve followed this for a bit. These girls were perfectly anonymous – but he used clever mental tricks to have them reveal their phone numbers, other personal details and send him pictures of themselves. He offered them insane amounts of money if they’d meet him at a hotel and sleep with them (remember – he was talking to them one by one, not as a group). He would tell them that if they sent him a picture – he’d forgive their sins and delay their punishments (which were to be killed an eaten) with ten years. One girl got scared and sent him her picture. It is not about flaws with the MSN client – it is about a devious, psychopathic man’s abillity to manipulate.
Elin
(Oh – and telling them that he had their address etc is just another way he manipulated them into believeing he had power – of course this doesn’t mean that he in fact had this information.)
Jill
Gro and Elin, thanks so much – that’s interesting, Gro, that your son believes that other people are telling the truth on MSN – something we need to try to teach them, I suppose…
The interview was fine, though I pity the journalist, who now has 20 minutes of video to edit down into 40 seconds… She had fixed questions sent her by another journalist who’s in charge of the whole piece, which will be one of those “what’s online chatting and should we worry about it” pieces. Some of the questions were, well, hard to answer – “What’s the difference between chat and MSN?” is a bit like asking what the difference is between a car and a Toyota, and that really wasn’t the answer they wanted, so I got that question again and again. What they *wanted* to hear was that you need to make your personal information public to use MSN (which isn’t true though probably the registration process makes it easy for the gullible to do so) while chat boxes on websites often don’t require any signup.
I’d just come in when they arrived and had no time to put on lipstick or check my hair, either. I’m *not* going to be watching the evening news, that’s for sure! I *hate* seeing myself on video. Utterly detest it.
It’s pretty cool being the expert on TV though 🙂