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. […]
I need to go to the police to get my residency permit stamped into my new passport. They’re shut today but having got my passports out, old and new, I leaf through the pages. Each stamp brings back memories: Rome in March, walking the streets of Manhattan at 6 am, a bus crash outside Bangkok, times, dates, people, touching my palm against cool ancient marble or the grass in a famous park. And always the return to Bergen’s damp green mountains. Such a pity that stamps in passports have become so rare.
Eirik
* quickly checking my UK passport, drawing sigh of relief when I find out the permit is still valid *
Great posting, Jill: I’ve had the same thought many a time. Leafing through my own seven year old passport, I see that the stamps from South Africa and Zimbabwe are almost alone. None of the European countries I’ve visited since, or the U.S. for that matter, have left a physical mark…
Jill
Aren’t you a thorough-bred Norwegian, Eirik? I had no idea! And though I accept that the main purpose of stamping passports was probably never to give tourists souvenirs, it is kind of sad seeing the empty pages after visits around Europe. You can get a lot of stamps going back and forwards between the different sections of the airport in Amsterdam though: in and out of Schengen…
francis s.
It is sad, although now that I have a Swedish passport, the up side is that whether I’m in the U.S. or Europe, I’ll always be able to stand in the blue line… or is that the green line?
Eirik
Ah, the Newth name is the giveaway here. My Dad’s a Brit of Irish Catholic descent, and my siblings and I kept his citizenship although we were born and grew up in Norway (the law is different nowadays). I have a big family in Worcester in the Midlands (not to be confused with the Worcesters in Massachusetts and South Africa), and more distant relatives in most of the English-speaking world (including Australia and New Zealand). In fact, I registered the newth.net domain partly to get in touch with other Newths, and it has worked quite well. I get the occasional mail and usually pass them on to my Dad, who is the keeper of the family records. 🙂
Jill
Aha. Newth is rather an unusual name in Norway, isn’t it… And dual citizenship, Francis, oh, I wish the Norwegians would let me do that. The Australians will now, after changing the law, but Norway still says no no no, see, they’re on the list of no dual citizenship countries. I’ve wondered though, whether Australia’s new law wouldn’t mean that even if I told Norway I gave up my Australian citizenship, and handed in my Australian passport, the Australians mightn’t still count me as Australian. In fact, Danny Butt couldn’t relinquish his citizenship. Well, OK, maybe he could, but it was hard…
Thomas
I remember a story from a few years back about an american who was frustrated that he did not get any stamps in his passport on his “Great European Journey”, so he went to the post office and asked them to stamp it to prove he had been to wherever. They said they could not do that, “all we stamp is stamps…”. So he bought a postal stamp, glued it into his passport, and … hey presto, the mail clerk stamped the passport! Don’t know if that will work today, or if it somehow invalidates your passport, but it would be fun to try.