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. […]
Gro
We are sitting in our offices, creating fun things – and very
happy for not being stucked in academia:)
gro & hanne & synnove
Jill
Ah. Yes. Of course 🙂
Actually, that’s true, not only are you obviously very happy and successful outside of academia, so are most o fthe other women I studied with.
Maybe the talk says “Women aren’t in academia because they’re bored with it”?
diane
Might be worth remembering, too, that academic jobs require the specific sacrifice of control over where one lives.
While many people are comfortable with a working partner, it’s another thing to have a partner whose job requires
you to up sticks every couple of years, if not more often, especially when the job does not pay well —
as a lot of early-stage academic jobs do not. Unless you make a specific commitment to take turns, someone
is always going to be the “trailing spouse,” which sucks.
Elin
Hei, gro & hanne & synnove!
Smart move:-)
Jill
I should tell everyone to go check out Pixelpikene, the women I studied with. Hanne and Synn¯ve’s creative web design firm is great, and has the best name ever. Gro is a novelist and a book reviewer and works with Pixelpikene too.
And when I went down and had lunch with them I wondered why I was in academia.
Jess
We discuss this frequently at my (nearly all-female at the grad student level) department. There’s definitely a consensus that academia is unfriendly to women, that even the best advisors give us less attention, sometimes even more so when they’re women themselves. And then there’s my main complaint, which is the nearly unshakeable conviction women in academia seem to have that, being women, they NEED to do gender-related, specifically woman-related work. As though the boys have the market cornered on everything that doesn’t have a uterus. How are we supposed to get academic equality if we keep doing work that hinges on our being female? I ask you.
There’s also the fact that women, even those of us who went to women’s colleges, are not socialized to have the kind of ironclad ego you sometimes need in academia. Combine that with the extra effort you need to put forth in order to get and maintain credibility, and our career-damaging desire to be of all things liked by our students, and you have an unusually gruelling grad school experience. I think about quitting every day. So do most of the people I talk to, but they’re girls too. I don’t really have data on the spear side, since Dan’s in physics and it’s a whole other kettle of fish, so maybe I’m overestimating the effects of growing up convinced (to whatever degree — because we all are, to some degree) that you can’t possibly be smart enough for it to matter on your ability to withstand the psychological rigors of grad school. But I doubt it.
That wasn’t very clear. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I know lots of people who introduce EVERYTHING they say in class with an apology, and usually end it with one too. Or whgo start backing down from their assertion if you make eye contact with them. Or who’ve had genuine mental breakdowns due to professorial cruelty. And not one of them has a Y chromosome. If you’re raised in self-doubt, can you really toughen up by the age at which most of us are facing the job market?
And then there’s the article I read in the Chronicle a few years back, about how women are now getting too educated to get married, because they can’t find men with comparable degrees of erudition, so they’re just not interested. Maybe we’re actually just trying to level the field.
JosÈ Angel
“… gone to young men every one…”