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 have the feeling I’ve been rather slow on this, but I only just discovered TechMeme. It’s like Google News – but for blog posts. So this morning, you can see that the most hotly debated item on blogs right now is Twitter. As Karoli sarcastically notes, “It really doesn’t take much to catch up on the geek feeds because the only topic I see over and over and over again is Twitter.” TechMeme shows you which blogs are writing about it and excerpts from the sort of things they’re writing. It’s a wonderful idea, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it works over time.
Raymond M. Kristiansen
I used to really like techmeme, but after a while I found just how much of an echo chamber it might be. Apparently, at an earlier time techmeme was – more or less – based on Robert Scoble’s opml file. Yes, an oversimplification, but still, it shows what crowds techmeme is by and for.
Techmeme (for tech news) and memeorandum.com (politics) are two prototypes, though. I would love to see similar meme systems for academic blogging about – for instance – virtual worlds. Then you could once in a while just scan that one page to get a small overview of what was going on.
Robert Scoble
Twitter isn’t on the home page anymore. And my original OPML feed probably only is 3% of what shows up on TechMeme anymore.
Jill
Oy, I hadn’t even realised TechMeme started from your OPML feed, Robert – though it was seeing your Twitter this morning about Twitter being all over TechMeme that made me look at it. I might need to read more about it. And yes, Raymond, I like the idea of an academic version of one – though would that work, making a specialised one? Hm, might have to read about how it works.