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. […]
Klastrup’s Cataclysms » Blog Archive » The World of Warcraft Reader soars to success ;)
[…] Via the blog of one of the editors of the anthology Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, to which I have contributed with a chapter, I was made aware of the fact that our anthology is right now doing quite well sales-wise! Today it’s #6,780 in Books (most sold) and #2 in the “Entertainment>Puzzles &Games>Reference” category on Amazon.com. That’s quite good for an academic book, isn’t it? I finally received a copy myself last week, and I must completely subjectively and smugly admit, that as print and bound object, both in terms of layout and content (a lot of very clever colleagues have contributed, it does look nice… Talking about academic books on games, I should also note that three current and former ITU colleagues of mine, Jonas Heide-Smith, Susana Tosca and Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen have also recently premiered with a book (monograph)¬† on games Understanding Videogames, published by Routledge. I know they have put a lot of work into writing a general and thorough introduction to understanding what video games are and how you can analyse them. Judging from my students responses (they are all referring to it already), sales of that is also going well! Congrats to the authors […]
BalletGirl
Maestro is magnificent!
Matthew
What a fantastic picture! Jill, would you be willing to share the original full-res picture? I’d love to make a wallpaper out of it.
on my level
I like the picture too… cherries are nice touch, but not to sure about the box on kleenex in the background. 🙂 I really like the WoW reader, but for leveling the game, I recommend one of the online guides.