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. […]
mae
Jill – This is not a direct response to pale as the sky, although I might do that next! I’m not sure if this is the best way to contact you – it’s my first writing (posting)to a blog. I’m doing a project on blogging in a course on Cyberculture that I’m doing at art school – and you are one of my main sources, being so prolific, knowledgeable and passionate! One or two weeks ago I read something, which I’m sure you said, in your blog, about people being able to maintain a false persona in ‘real’ life, but through regular online journalling one cannot hide one’s ‘real’ self, one’s self inevitably comes through. This interests me, partly because it contrasts with how people see the internet – as a place where role playing and deception are the norm. Do you remember writing about that? Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it, but will keep looking. I’m really interested in how liberated people feel on the internet, seeming to reveal so much of their personal lives to a huge public, through blogs and even webcam girls, and then the connections that are built up through those journals and blogs. I don’t have a blog, but am hoping to set one up soon.
Jill
Mae, sure, you can contact me like this – ah, I forgot to put my email address in my new design didn’t I?
I’m pretty sure someone else must have said that bit about its being easier to maintain a false persona offline than online. Perhaps it’s your own thought, that you compiled from other things you read?
But you do raise an interesting point, and what I *might* have written, though I don’t remember it, but I’m happy to write it now, is that it doesn’t really matter whether a blog is “real” or “fictional”, because the emotions and experiences and thoughts expressed and the connections made and the ideas written out can be real and moving whether they happened to a particular individual on that day or whether they were simply imagined.
Novels and movies move me and are important to me whether they were “based on a true story” or not.
And it’s interesting how people think they’re finding out everything about a blogger’s life. So much is not written. Even a more personal blogger than I leaves out vast swathes of what he or she does and feels. Yet as a reader I know I piece together the little bits of infomration that I do have and shape myself a lovely picture of each blogger I read. Just as Wolfgang Iser says we do with fiction.
Good luck with your blogging and on your project!
Constance
Nothing comes out of the sack but what was in it...
Jill
Well, you know, sacks don’t really have a great deal in common with literature or art, anyway.