MediaFutures

Intelligente Bergen 2025
2025-11-06 09:00 - 15:00 (Europe/Oslo) | Universitetsaulaen i Bergen
UiB AI invites you to the fourth edition of the annual conference Intelligente Bergen, on Thursday, November 6. The title of this year’s conference is “Artificial Intelligence – Human Transformation”. The conference will be held in Norwegian.
Intelligente Bergen brings together businesses, the public sector, researchers, and students in the Bergen region to showcase research on and applications of artificial intelligence. The conference takes place in the University Aula, Muséplassen 3 (entrance via the Museum Garden, toward the Student Center).
The conference explores new opportunities for collaboration and opens dialogue across disciplines and sectors. The goal is to connect researchers, industry, students, and the public sector, and to show how AI is being used, studied, and developed across a wide range of sectors in the region. The 2025 conference will place special emphasis on transformation and adaptation.
The conference is free of charge, but requires registration.Register for Intelligente Bergen 2025 here.
Program
08:15–09:00 – Registration and coffee/teaEntrance through the Museum Garden or via Godt Brød and down the stairs. Find your name badge and go up one floor for coffee/tea and to meet other attendees.
09:00–10:10 – Introduction and keynote talks

Dag Stenvoll, Coordinator for UiB AI: “AI and Transformation: Intelligente Bergen 2025”

Morten Goodwin, Professor at the University of Agder: “Artificial Intelligence: A New Era for Humanity”

Nora Gjøen-Gjøsæter, Head of Artificial Intelligence at Kantega: “What’s Preventing Western Norway Companies from Creating Value with AI?”

10:10–10:40 – Break
10:40–11:30 – Artificial Intelligence and Transformation, Part 1

Pål A. Reiersgaard, Area Manager for Platform and Head of Technology & Development, Lerøy Seafood Group: “AI Accelerating the Ocean Industries”

Kjetil Århus, Director of Digitalization, City of Bergen: “AI and Municipal Transformation”

Kjetil Høydal, Innovation Engineer, Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency: “Drones – A Paradigm Shift in the Defense Sector”

11:30–12:15 – Bergen’s New AI Center: AI-LEARNIn June, the Research Council of Norway awarded NOK 200 million to the Artificial Intelligence Centre for the Empowerment of Human Learning, as part of the national AI initiative. The center is led by the University of Bergen (UiB) and NTNU and includes 30 partners.
Speakers in this session include Barbara Wasson (UiB, Center Director), Alexander Joyce (KS/Vestfold County Council), Øystein Nordberg (Midlaier AS), and Ingunn Ness (SLATE), discussing the potential of such a center for the Bergen region.
12:15–13:00 – Lunch
13:00–13:45 – Artificial Intelligence and Transformation, Part 2

Helene Frihammer, Regional Director, NHO Vestland: “Let’s Hope AI Takes Our Jobs!”

Susan Johnsen, Former Managing Director, Allegro: “AI Took Our Jobs”

Benedicte Mosby Irgens, Associate Professor of Japanese Language and Linguistics, UiB: “Foreign Languages and the New Language Technologies”

Vegard Slettvoll, Medical Student, UiB: “AI in Health and Healthcare: Opportunities and Challenges”

Damoun Nassehi, Associate Professor, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, UiB: “Socrates AI”

Xieqi Shi, Professor of Dentistry, UiB: “Deep Learning in Dental Radiological Diagnostics”

13:45–14:30 – AI as a Cause and Tool for TransformationThe closing panel discussion addresses key issues that emerged throughout the day. How can AI help meet the need for transformation—caused by factors like an aging population and the green transition? And how does the rapid development of AI itself demand transformation in our workplaces and society at large?
Panelists:

Odd Gurvin, Senior Consultant, Innovation Infrastructure, Vestland County Council

Nora Gjøen-Gjøsæter, Head of Artificial Intelligence, Kantega

Pål Grønås Drange, Associate Professor, Department of Informatics, UiBModerator: Inge Jonassen, Professor/Department Head and Chair of the UiB AI Steering Group

14:30–15:00 – Fruit and Networking

Evaluation of norwegian language models: language and law
2025-11-18 12:15 - 13:15 | Spiserommet, Domus Academica, Oslo
In this seminar, Lilja Øvrelid and Hans Christian Farsethås will give an overview of Norwegian language models and how they are evaluated. They will outline the main features of current evaluation methodology, review existing Norwegian evaluations, and highlight where new approaches are needed—particularly in specialist domains such as law.
Lilja Øvrelid, WP5 leader in MediaFutures, is a Professor at the Department of Informatics (University of Oslo) and leads the Language Technology Group (LTG). She is also a co-leader in Integreat.
Hans Christian Farsethås is a researcher at the Department of Public and International Law (University of Oslo) and part of the Digital Welfare State project.
This seminar is organized by the Research Group on Law & Technology (JOT) and the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (SERI).The event will take place in Oslo and will be held in Norwegian only.

Research on Norwegian Open Large Language Models at UiO
2025-12-11 09:15 - 11:45 | Seminar room Logo 2438, UiO
The Language Technology Group (LTG) at the Department of Informatics, including the leaders of MediaFutures work package 5, hosts a seminar on open large language models for the languages of Norway, with emphasis on ongoing experimentation at LTG with end-to-end model training and evaluation, as well as the introduction of an experimental chatbot prototype.
Large language models (LLMs) are the main engine under the hood of what is often called “generative AI”. For many, it may look as if they emerged out of the blue, and they are mostly associated with commercial blackbox services run by BigTech companies, with trade secrets locked behind armored gates.
But in fact LLMs originally come from research labs and models and training data used to be open: in the same sense as open source software and open science. And nowadays, open LLMs again show signs of catching up in performance with their closed proprietary counterparts, including for languages other than English.
Through the seminar, LTG will present research on open and transparent LLMs conducted at UiO. We will reflect on experiences in adaptation to Norwegian and Sámi, limitations in training and evaluation data, pre-training and fine-tuning of open models, and open methodological questions. For this work, LTG also provides a chatbot prototype, based on our most recent Norwegian model NorMistral-11B.
In addition to presentations by LTG researchers, the Norwegian Language Council will review their findings comparing open and closed LLMs with regards to their Norwegian language skills, and the National Library will present on LLM training data for research in Norway.
Everyone is welcome!
Registration
To help us plan for the event, we ask that prospective participants register on-line.
Program
Coffee is served from 09:15. Moderator: Yves Scherrer (LTG).
9:30 – 9:40 Welcome and introduction (Lilja Øvrelid, LTG)
9:40 – 9:55 The importance of openness in the era of generative AI (Andrey Kutuzov, LTG)
9:55 – 10:05 Web-derived LLM training data for Norwegian (Stephan Oepen, LTG)
10:05 – 10:15 Training data for Norwegian LLM research (National Library of Norway)
10:15 – 10:30 Coffee break
10:30 – 10:50 Developing NorMistral-11B, with chat interface demonstration (David Samuel, LTG)
10:50 – 11:05 NorEval: Native Benchmarking for Norwegian LLMs (Vladislav Mikhailov, LTG)
11:05 – 11:25 The language quality of the Norwegian output in language models. Test results from the Language Council (Kristine Eide, Language Council of Norway)
11:25 – 11:45 Outlook, Q&A (Erik Velldal, LTG)

Winter School at the Northern Lights Deep Learning (NLDL) Conference
2026-01-05 08:00 - 2026-01-09 17:00 | UiT Campus
MediaFutures associate professor Samia Touileb will be speaker at the Winter School at the Northern Lights Deep Learning (NLDL) Conference 2026!
The NLDL Winter School consists of tutorials by experts in the field and is co-hosted by NORA as part of the NORA Research School.
For registration, please use https://www.nldl.org/attend/registration
Getting formal ECTS Credits: UiT The Arctic University of Norway will award 5 ECTS for the Winter School to students who register formally for the course (the number of spots is limited to 40 students).

To register for the 5 ECTS credits use the following link: https://en.uit.no/admission#kapittel_735916

The course description and the course code are available at: https://uit.no/utdanning/emner/emne/862218/fys-8603

Please note that the application deadline is 15 November, which means that you will receive a confirmation of admission a week after the deadline, i.e., 25 November.

For credits, the participants are required to present an ongoing research project (poster presentation) as part of the winter school and complete a home exam afterward. For students early in their PhD without an ongoing research project can present their PhD research objective and future project as a poster.

Note that the poster presentation is part of the NLDL Winter School and not part of the NLDL proceedings. The posters should be in A0 Portrait format.

Posters can be printed locally via Xtenso. If you want to use this service, the poster should be sent to mette@xtenso.no by 20th December. The cost for poster printing is 750 NOK.

Touilebs research focuses on alignment, bias and fairness in NLP, information extraction, summarization, and the application of NLP and machine learning in social science contexts. Her tutorial will address the main sources of bias in NLP systems, existing frameworks for fairness, safety concerns, and current debates about alignment:
Tutorial 4: Ethical challenges in NLP
While AI systems have shown remarkable progress in recent years they raise various ethical challenges. In this tutorial, we will explore this ethical dimension with a particular focus on bias, fairness, and alignment in Natural Language Processing (NLP). The tutorial will combine theoretical discussions with practical examples. We will discuss the main sources of bias in NLP systems, existing frameworks for fairness, safety concerns, and current debates about alignment. We will have a practical, hands-on, session to demonstrate how bias and other safety concerns manifest in modern NLP models, and how to critically evaluate them and reduce them.

Adhera Health Seminar: AI as Family Media for Health and Wellbeing: Personalization, Context, and Biopsychosocial Perspectives
2026-01-21 12:00 - 13:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures invites to Adhera Health’s seminar on AI as family media for health and wellbeing.
Adhera Health is a digital health company that creates AI-powered, personalized support platforms and programs to empower families and caregivers managing pediatric chronic conditions, improve treatment adherence and wellbeing, and enhance health outcomes through evidence-based digital interventions.
AI as Family Media for Health and Wellbeing: Personalization, Context, and Biopsychosocial Perspectives

Abstract
Families today must navigate a complex landscape of health and wellbeing information, often facing waves of misinformation and conflicting guidance. Artificial intelligence can act as a media and communication technology that supports families in interpreting information, building trust, and making informed decisions, while respecting individual and family-level differences.
Modern personalized health communication increasingly relies on context-aware systems that adapt content to family routines, beliefs, and emotional dynamics. Such systems must carefully balance challenges including reducing stigma, respecting the autonomy of different family members, and delivering sensitive content that addresses diverse needs and perspectives. These systems integrate clinical data, psychosocial factors, and personal preferences to generate adaptive, multimodal educational materials, behavioral guidance, and emotional support.
A biopsychosocial perspective is central, recognizing that effective AI-mediated interventions consider biological, psychological, and social dimensions of health. Pediatrics represents a prime testing ground for these approaches, given the need for sensitive, high-stakes communication and the limited research on AI-mediated personalized family support in this context.
Drawing on ongoing research with Adhera Health (USA and Spain) and the University of Bergen, we present examples of AI-mediated communication that complement human care, helping families navigate complex health information responsibly, foster trust, and support wellbeing in ethically and emotionally informed ways.
Speaker bio
Luis Fernández-Luque is Chief Scientific Officer at Adhera Health, where he leads R&D activities in Spain and the USA, including projects funded by the European Commission and NIH, as well as partnerships with healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies across Europe and the United States.
Since 2006, Luis has conducted pioneering research in mobile health, wearable devices, and AI-driven health applications, including deep learning and health recommender systems. His work sits at the intersection of computer science and behavioral change, combining human factors research with AI to deliver personalized, trustworthy, and effective digital health interventions. He has led and contributed to international research projects on diabetes and obesity in adult and pediatric populations across Europe, North America, and Asia. He earned his PhD at the University of Tromsø, exploring strategies to identify trustworthy content for people with chronic conditions, and collaborated during his PhD with GroupLens (University of Minnesota), the CDC, and Microsoft Research.
Luis has extensive experience in research management, including serving as PI and co-PI on large-scale projects and mentoring PhD students. He is a senior member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and has held leadership roles in top scientific societies. He has authored over 150 publications, many of which address the intersection of AI, behavioral science, and digital health in chronic disease management.

MediaFutures Series Seminar: Lucie Flek "From Framing to Alignment: Representing Human Worldviews in AI"
2026-06-18 12:00 - 13:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures warmly welcomes Lucie Flek’s talk on:
“From Framing to Alignment: Representing Human Worldviews in AI”.

Date: 18 June
Time: 12:00-13:00
Venue: MediaFutures HQ (3rd Floor, Media City)
Zoom Link: https://uib.zoom.us/j/63914739737?pwd=[REDACTED]

Abstract:
Educational materials, political discourse, and online communities do more than communicate information: they express perspectives, values, and worldviews. In our information ecosystem, these human representations are no longer only interpreted by people – they are also learned, reproduced, and transformed by AI systems.
This talk explores the connections between framing, pluralism, and AI alignment through the lens of representation. What does it mean for an AI system to represent a perspective? Can models capture diverse viewpoints without collapsing them into a single “average” position? And how should we think about alignment when values themselves are heterogeneous and contested?
Lucie Flek argues that many AI alignment challenges boil down to challenges of representation: whose perspectives are captured, which values are privileged, and whether our evaluation methods are even robust enough to evaluate and control these choices.
Speaker’s bio:
Lucie Flek is a full professor at the University of Bonn, leading the Data Science and Language Technologies group. Her main interests lie in machine learning research for natural language processing (NLP), including AI robustness and safety. The application areas range from large language models and conversational systems, across clinical NLP and mental health research, to misinformation detection and social media analyses. Prof. Flek has been active both in academia and industry – she used to manage natural language understanding research programs in Amazon Alexa and contributed to the Google Shopping Search launch in Europe. Her academic work at the University of Pennsylvania and University College London revolved around user modeling from text, and its applications in psychology and social sciences. Her PhD at TU Darmstadt focused on meaning ambiguity, incorporating expert lexical-semantic resources into DNN classification tasks. She has served as Area Chair for Computational Social Sciences at numerous ACL* conferences, and as an editor of the NLP section of multiple AI journals. Before her career path in natural language processing, Prof. Flek has been contributing to particle physics research at CERN in the area of axion searches.
