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. […]
hanna
But it shows that you have no visitors from the UK! And I know that’s wrong! (She says, currently in the UK.)
MarkH
yes, and also the sunny, exotic city of Coventry!! That smells of fried food today for some reason.
Liz Lawley
Can you spot the Rochester cluster? 🙂
Jill
Oh nice 🙂
I think maybe it’s only updated once a day. At midnight. I installed it yesterday evening, and it was showing “starting tomorrow” or something – so perhaps this is just whoever visited yesterday after I installed it, and nobody from England read my weblog between the hours of 8 pm or whenever and midnight?
Now I can’t wait till tomorrow to see what happens to it 🙂
Scott
I think it’s cool. I never assume I’m completely anonymous when I visit blogs anyways, I’m sure I’m not the only one who checks my referrers and visitor stats compulsively.
(I’m the Vancouver dot, by the way 🙂
LiL
I like it. I can usually pretty much tell where people are from looking at access logs and at who provided the connection for the visit (i.e. broadband providers or phone companies – they’re often quite location-specific). Not always, just usually.
Jason
I think the lowest big dot of the 3 on the east coast in N. American is likely Washington D.C.?
McChris
I’m in Austin, Texas, but I don’t see it on the map. 😛
Johanka
I’ll be the dot in central Europe – Brno, Czech Republic.
Wilson
That city in South America seems to be Montevideo (Uruguay).
Jill
Cool hearing who’s where! It doesn’t seem to have updated overnight, though. Hm. I’ll leave it a while longer and see whether it ddoes anything m ore.
William Wend
I check my referral logs every night. This is really cool. I like the nice cluster by New Jersey
Francois Lachance
Map is askew. Something odd in the shape of the map.
I could spot Rochester, NY and the Canadian cities of Hamilton and Kingston situated at either end of Lake Ontario. No Toront. But ahah there is a second Lake Ontario. And Toronto is there in a universe by itself. Forlorn. But hey… that’s not a second lake. It’s Lake Eire. eerie, eh?
Lars
Interestingly inaccurate. Just like in RL, Norway ends at Trondheim.
Stewart
and sadly no memory of West Australian visits? 🙁
Jill
Well, the map updated, but I guess it’s not entirely accurate…
H?•kon Styri
I suspect that proxy servers may have some influence on the map. In addition, some ISPs that cover several countries may reassign IP numbers faster than the geographical positions are updated.
My own small test also indicates that the number of visitors seems to be smaller than what my own traffic log reports.