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. […]
Steven D. Krause’s Official Blog » Blog Archive » Weekend(ish) link round-up, mostly BAWS
[…] Two links from Jill Walker, who appears to also be working on a book about blogs (dang, I hope it’s different than my currently imaginary book): first, there’s this, a PDF of a study (summary, I think?), “In 2006, the Top 50K Blogs Generated $500M in Ad Revenue.” Second, this post called “on ads and readership,” in which she discusses a web tracking service called Alexa (which actually isn’t that interesting to me because it only works for the “top 100,000″ blogs) and the role of advertising on readership. Interesting stuff, and it makes me think, happily, that Jill and I are approaching the blog elephant from different ends. […]
Liz Lawley
I don’t think Alexa shows RSS traffic, so as more people learn about aggregators and use them, it changes the direct web access stats for many sites.
Jill Walker Rettberg
Good point, Liz. And amusing, Steve, that we’re both thinking of blog books. I’d say there are a lot of different angles that can be taken to such a book…
jo
facebook!
it took a while to reach my age group, jill, but it’s got a firm grip on my friends and me now.
jo