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. […]
JoseAngel
So, Jill, you’ve felt the shive of what I like to call the “Apocalypse of Total Communication”?
Have a look at this, another shiverer:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, aech straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” (Opening words of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”, 1926)
JoseAngel
Oops, “shiver”. °Shiver!
kawazu
that’s probably the sensitive point about all these new concepts of integrating things… As William Gibson used to write (guess it was in “idoru”, though I’m not sure…): looking at a network, we see that someone is “alive” merely by the fact that he/she is a vital node creating amounts and amounts of information for us to see what he/she is up to, how he/she feels, lives, thinks, works. and we get a pretty clear picture. we even know when someone, well, dies – that’s when this node in the network stops producing information. guess there need to be some more serious talks about secrecy, about privacy and “trusted” computing way beyond technologies like tcpa, drm and the like. people need to be able to trust the machines they use for their daily life…
Alexander
I agree especially with the last point, Jill — I couldn’t believe it that Flock really just offers the choice between publishing none of my favorite links and all of them. I’m not even using that many bookmarks, but this is a show-stopper.
Arne Olav
… you could always choose not to tag the favourites..? This will not put them on del.ico.us, and you could sort them as regular bookmarks, or collections.
I agree that Flock is incomplete, and that the integration of the different elements isn’t working optimally. But Flock is not even in beta yet. I think this a step in the right direction; I’d love an interface that would gather as much of my social stuff as possible; this is what I do when I’m online, I really don’t relate to the metaphors of surfing, crawling or navigating.