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. […]
Norman
Isn’t it all part of the intellectual disintegration so rife in our post modern world? It’s there in our “anything goes” approach to language and logic. We find what’s really a form of literature being presented as History. Boundaries are so blurred in so many ‘disciplines’, that it’s unsurprising to find his readers making the sorts of assumptions to which he refers.
Jill
Yes, our confusion is very postmodern, isn’t it. Or post-postmodern, perhaps, we must be up to that by now.
On the other hand, there were apparently violent discussions in the 18th century about whether or not epistolary novels were TRUE or not. For instance, a Duke published all the love letters he received from a nun – but were they truely from a Venezualan nun or just his own fabrication?
Btw, I can’t remember the exact example, or where I read it, but I’m sure I read of an epistolary novel more or less like that, anyway 😉
Norman
I’d like to think there was a time we were beginning [however briefly] to make clear distinctions between imagination being presented in a realistic form, and claiming imagination as reality.
But isn’t there an enormous difference between attempts by the Duke you mention, to pass off bogus material, and an approach which can be seen as meaning all written material is “really” only one form or another of literature, so those 18th Century type arguments are no longer even relevant?
Planned Obsolescence
Synthesis
In a bizarre merger of the background materials of my last two posts, Jill Walker today directs our attention to William Gibson’s thoughts on writing, “truth,” and accountability. When did we all become such literalists that we would suggest that someo…
the chutry experiment
Truth and Blogging
I’m still in the process of collecting links about the ethics of blogging. I think it is an important topic in terms of defining blogs. In my original post, I commented that “My own tendency is to avoid revising.” Oddly…