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. […]
Jose Angel
So “human rights” means something like “rights a white male might or might not have” and then “equal rights” come running behind to try and catch up with the human? Sounds like a contradictory way of conceiving “equality”.
Jill
Yes, it doesn’t seem particularly fair, does it. Admittedly I’m basing my entire understanding of the matter on Marie Simonsen’s rendition, but it sounds pretty idiotic.
Jesper
The declaration of human rights does include a discrimination clause (7).
We could phrase the question in another way: What does it say about a culture that it has general rules for protecting humans against discrimination, specific laws for protecting women against discrimination, but no specific laws for protecting men against discrimination?
I used to wonder whether men-only obligatory military service wasn’t in conflict with human rights and anti-discrimination – I am obliged to die for my country – but as I understand most countries have exception clauses (I can’t remember the exact phrasing) that makes it OK to do gender discrimination in the case of military service. Who has the short end of the stick?
Jill
Jesper, the point is that Norway is only now ratifying the UN’s 1999 human rights conventions and making them part of Norwegian law. There are six conventions, about:
Norway has included the first three in our own human rights legislation, which has a position between the constitution and other laws. That means, as far as I’ve been able to understand, that politicians cannot easily change these laws. The fourth and fifth are being discussed now, and are for some reason not to be included in the same portion of the law, but as one of the regular laws. It seems it’s rather like CSS: if these less-important rules don’t mesh well with these other more important rules, then the more important rules take precedence. In this case, womens’ rights and rights of ethnical minorties are deemed to be less important laws that yield if higher legislation should be in conflict.
There’s a good and informative article about this in the latest edition of