Trends in news use and avoidance
2024-02-16 12:00 - 13:00 (Europe/Oslo) | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
In times of a rather negative-angled news landscape, NRK mapped Norwegians’ approach to news, and news avoidance, with extra focus on the young readers. With data from NRK’s ​​Youth survey, Reuters Digital News Report, Norsk Mediebarometer, Opinions UNG2024 and more, we see some new features in how news is consumed – and avoided.
On February 16th, MediaFutures work package 1 is inviting to a lunch seminar on the development of news use and avoidance.
The seminar will be held in Norwegian.
Seminar speaker is Ingvild Hjertaas, Media Researcher in NRK Analysis / NRK News. Ingvild worked 10 years in Aftenposten as product manager where she also was giving courses in digital tools and content production before she started in NRK in 2017. She has developed a highly effective understanding of what works and engages users online, and has played a key role in the development and operation of popular services such as quizzes and word games. The lunchseminar will start at 12 o’clock in MediaFutures office, 3rd floor in MCB. To join digital follow the link to zoom

Realizing AIs Potential at the Workplace - Can Copilot Unlock its Opportunities?
2024-02-21 08:30 - 10:00 | Terminushall, Jernbanebakken, 5015 Bergen
Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Industry is hosting a meeting on AI at work. Amongst many others, also MediaFutures Associate Professor Samia Touileb is holding a speech about Limitations and Ethical Considerations Surrounding Language Models.
Many have started to explore AI in the form of ChatGPT and similar services over the past year. We have seen countless videos depicting how fantastic it will be to have artificial intelligence on our side, and some have already begun implementing what many are eagerly awaiting: Copilot. Copilot is predicted to revolutionize the workday for many, and the Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Industry is excited to invite you to a live demonstration of this groundbreaking tool that not only promises to streamline but truly transform the way we work.
The meeting will begin with an introduction to Copilot, hold by Lars-Christian Ryland, Senior manager i KPMG and Marie Killi, Associate i KPMG. Later on Hans-Fredrik Pedersen from Microsoft Norge will demonstrate Copilot and sit in a panel discussion with Samia Touileb.
Please register here before the 20th of February to join the event.

UiB AI #9 Trustworthy AI
2024-03-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Storsalen, Nygårdsgaten 5, første etasje.
How do we work with trust in artificial intelligence? Meet our researchers and participate in the next UiB AI seminar!
Artificial intelligence today is maybe not yet human-centric, but it is definitely human collaborative. That means that people use AI to augment their abilities: the spam filter saves me time, the route finder helps me orient, the speech to text helps me caption videos, the video editor helps me change from vertical to horizontal format without losing the important objects in the video. Also, AI requires constant human support: to clean, label and overall preprocess data for learning algorithms, to identify and correct mistakes, to do the unusual non-typical tasks that an AI cannot handle. Much has been said about the trustworthiness of AI in recent years. Trust is a relational property between people that can facilitate or hinder collaboration. Trustworthiness is a value that we would AI to be aligned with.
The department of Information Science and Media Studies and the faculty of social sciences is concerned with the social and collaborative aspects and properties of AI. In this edition of the UiB AI seminar series, they showcase four research examples on how they work with trust and AI. The short presentations will be followed by a panel debate.
Program
Creating Embodied Artificial Trustworthiness
by Ragnhild Mølster (presenter) and Jens Elmelund Kjeldsen
Should we trust the world with a IP-hungry AI in it?
by Richard Misek
Trustworthy journalism through AI
by Andreas Lothe Opdahl, based on a paper
Trust but verify
by Rustam Galimullin

Panel: should we seek trustworthiness for AI or for its human collaborators?
Participants: TBD
Moderator: Marija Slavkovik

Women in AI 2024
2024-03-08 18:00 - 20:00 | Domus Bibliotheca, Karl Johans gate 47, 0162, Oslo
On the 8th of March, MediaFutures partner NORA invites to the Women in AI celebration at Domus Bibliotheca, Oslo. The event will also be streamed live.
Doors open at 17:30 – mineral water, refreshments & canapes will be served.
Register here
Together with our partners, NORA has dedicated efforts towards supporting universities, university colleges, research institutions, startups, companies and individual researchers who wish to discuss and address the diversity and gender gap in AI research, education and in industry. By focusing on the topic and by providing a platform for open discussion, NORA aims to develop and support initiatives that can increase the inclusion of a more diverse workforce in AI. Together, we can inspire a more inclusive agenda within the otherwise male-dominated field of AI and ensure equal access and equal opportunities for future generations. Our collective goal should be to bring awareness by promoting female role models, and by portraying the breadth of opportunities for AI in society at large.
On the 8th of March, we invite you to join us for an evening event where we discuss the situation of gender and diversity in AI today and measures needed in effort to tackle inequality and mitigate bias in the field of artificial intelligence.
During this Women and AI event, we will bring together representatives from industry and research to address the gender disparity in AI in Norway and the world today, and discuss initiatives to ensure inclusivity and diversity in AI for the future.
Program:

Time
Speaker

18:00-18:10
Welcome!

18:10-18:20
Speaker: Ajla Gasal,
Chief editor at the non-profit Sciencious, ambassador of the Norwegian WiSTEM chapter, TEDx speaker, author and active member of her student government.

18:20-18:40
Keynote 1:
Hilde G. Corneliussen, Research Professor and Research Leader, Vestlandsforsking

18:40-19:00
Keynote 2:
Ieva Martinkenaite, SVP, Head of Research and Innovation

19:00-19:20
Keynote 3:
Rebecca Wiborg Seyfarth, VP Engineering, Völur

19:20-20:00
Panel discussion

20:00-21:00
Networking and mingling

Media Innovation Xchange. EU Conference on Digital Transformation and Media Innovation
2024-03-13 08:00 - 2024-03-14 17:00 | digital
Immerse yourself in the future of European media and join the event in Brussels (or digitally) on March 13-14, 2024, for a conference on the digital transformation and innovation of the media sector. The media sector is in a constant state of flux, with many technological advances emerging at a rapid pace, bringing forth significant opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges. On March 13 and 14, the Flanders Department of Culture, Youth and Media delves deeper into this during the Media Innovation Xchange conference in Brussels. Policymakers and stakeholders from both Belgium and other EU member states will have the opportunity to exchange knowledge and expertise, gain inspiration, and establish international contacts.

What can you expect?
Enjoy a line-up of inspiring speakers and fascinating showcases and explore the rapid advancements and challenges in media brought forth by technological innovations. See the program in the link below.
You can expect topics such as:

European video game sector and media crossovers
Artificial intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR)
Data driven media industry
Innovation to counter, detect and refute disinformation
European broadcasters: staying relevant through technology and innovation
Reaching younger audiences

To join online, please register at the bottom of the page in the link below.

News personalization with "Curate"
2024-04-05 13:00 - 14:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures invites to a seminar on news personalization with Schibsted in MediaFutures headquarter, MCB, 3rd floor. The seminar will also be streamed.
The Curate project has been created to enable Schibsted media outlets to craft an optimal content selection for each individual user, delivering content tailored precisely to their preferences, in the appropriate format, location, and timing, all while upholding the journalistic integrity of the mission. Originally developed to curate Aftenposten’s front page in Norway, Curate has evolved into the central recommendation system for over 50 news brands within the Schibsted and Polaris Media groups.
Christoph Schmitz, Product Manager of Curate and Jacob Welander, Data Scientist at Schibsted will tell us in this seminar about the project itself, what has been done so far and how Schibsted has been utilizing such technology innovating media experience.
Join the meeting on zoom:
https://uib.zoom.us/j/69494993779?pwd=[REDACTED]

Mobilisation seminar on AI for trust and sustainability
2024-04-10 10:00 - 14:00 | Storsalen, Nygårdsgaten 5, første etasje.
In connection with the upcoming announcement of the AI billion, the Research and Innovation Department at UiB (Forsknings- og innovasjonsavdelingen FIA) invites academic communities researching artificial intelligence to a mobilization seminar. The purpose is to highlight AI environments and center initiatives at UiB, and identify opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration in future work.
The Research Council’s board decided at the meeting on February 7th that the Government’s billion-dollar investment “AI for Trust and Sustainability” will be announced in the form of 4-6 centers for artificial intelligence. The centers will be 5-year thematic, challenge-driven initiatives, promoting interdisciplinary, interinstitutional, and cross-sectoral collaboration. The announcement is divided into two parts, with a mandatory outline in the first step, to be submitted by June 7, 2024. Here you can read more about how the Research Council envisions the focus of the centers in each of the three main areas – societal consequences, technological development, and innovative use.
The keynote speaker at the event will be Anne Kjersti Fahlvik, Director of the Research Council’s area, followed by a question and answer session after her presentation.
We will also facilitate opportunities for environments interested in coordinating an AI center and planning to apply for the announcement to present a brief pitch with their idea for a center application in plenary. There will be ample opportunity to explore collaboration and synergies with other AI environments at UiB and external stakeholders and potential partners through a networking lunch session. All academic communities with an AI profile are invited to this event, and we encourage everyone interested in participating in a center application to join. Those wishing to present their pitch for an AI center on stage should register this in the registration form by April 2nd.
The deadline for registration for the general public is extended to April 5th.
**Program:**
**10:00-11:00**
– **Welcome and Information about the Announcement**
– Welcome by Vice-Rector Pinar Heggernes, UiB
– Presentation by Anne Kjersti Fahlvik, Director of Innovation in Business and Public Sector, Research Council
– Q&A Session
**11:00-11:20**
– **Coffee Break**
**11:20-12:55**
– **AI Center and Research Center Applications**
– Support System and Application Process at UiB by Birgit Falch, Research and Innovation Department, and Alexander Oltu, IT Department
– What Does it Entail to Apply for a Research Center? TBA
– Pitches for Research Centers for Artificial Intelligence at UiB
– Upon registration, participants in the seminar who wish to coordinate a center application are encouraged to indicate whether they will pitch their idea for an artificial intelligence center to the audience. The purpose of idea pitching is to open up collaboration opportunities and invite stakeholders and academic communities interested in contributing to further develop the idea.
**12:55-13:00**
– **Conclusion, Introduction to Lunch and Networking**
**13:00-14:00**
– **Lunch and Networking in the Lounge outside the Main Hall, with Opportunity for Posters/Stands**

CuttingEdgeAI: Open Norwegian language models as common property.
2024-04-12 13:00 - 15:15 | Domus Bibliotheca, Karl Johans gate 47, 0162, Oslo
Earlier this month, MediaFutures professor Lilja Øvrelid and Erik Velldal released in collaboration with other partners several Norwegian language models openly available and trained on open data. These have now been downloaded over 6000 times and put into active use. Now, NORA is organising a launch event, where they will present the models alongside their collaborators and discuss the way forward for open Norwegian language models as common property.
What to expect:
Large Language Models (LLMs) are the technology behind services like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot. These are examples of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms that can seemingly independently create text, images, sound, or even video. The underlying technology is large-scale machine learning, a combination of vast amounts of data and computational power. The data these models are trained on is crucial for their behavior, including knowledge of language, values, and sociocultural contexts.
Generative AI will continue to have profound effects on society. The development is dominated by large American technology companies, mostly behind closed doors, where smaller languages like Norwegian are not a priority. It is necessary for Norway to take action to preserve our digital autonomy. We need open Norwegian language models that more accurately reflect Scandinavian culture and values.
This event provides insights into the technology and ongoing efforts, including those at the University of Oslo and the National Library, to offer open generative language models specifically tailored to the Norwegian language for use in both research and commercial development. Several Norwegian language models trained on the European supercomputer LUMI were made openly available in February 2024. Within a few weeks, these models were downloaded thousands of times.
You can register for the event by clicking on the link below event tags.
Program:

Tid
Tittel
Foredragsholder

12:30 – 13:00
Registrering

13:00 – 13:05
Velkommen
Klas Pettersen, NORA.

13:05 – 13:20
Hvordan fungerer GPT-språkmaskineriet
Stephan Oepen, UiO.

13:20 – 13:45
Lansering av nye store og åpne norske språkmodeller
Lilja Øvrelid, UiO;
Erik Velldal, UiO;
Andrey Kutuzov, UiO;
David Samuel, UiO.

13:45 – 13:55
Digitale norske språkdata ved Nasjonalbiblioteket
Svein Arne Brygfjeld, NB.

13:55 – 14:10
Hvordan bruke norske språkmodeller i praksis? Erfaringer fra Schibsted
Simen Eide, Leder for Schibsteds AI Enablement Program.

14:10 – 14:20
LUMI: Lagrings- og beregningsinfrastruktur for storskala KI
Gunnar Bøe, Managing Director, Sigma2.

14:20 – 15:10
Panelsamtale: Samfunnsbehov og risikoer knyttet til store språkmodeller
Moderator: Klas Pettersen
Panelister:
– Aslak Sira Myhre, NB
– Gunnar Bøe, Sigma2
– Lilja Øvrelid, UiO
– Sven Størmer Thaulow, Schibsted
– Åse Wetås, Språkrådet

15:10 – 15:15
Avslutning

Building to learn, not to launch
2024-04-16 14:15 - 16:00 | Lauritz Meltzers Hus, - SV-bygget - Fosswinckelsgate 6 - - Auditorium Storetinget 1st floor, Bergen
April 16, Lasse Mejlvang Tvedt, and Christopher Pearsell-Ross from Futures Lab will hold a guest lecture in professor Frode Guribyes course, where they talk about how Schibsted works with prototyping and AI to make new applications.
Join Lasse Mejlvang Tvedt, Senior Creative Technologist, and Christopher Pearsell-Ross, Senior UX Designer, to learn more about how Schibsted Futures Lab uses strategic foresight, speculative design, and technical prototyping to explore AI and emerging user interfaces. Their work spans virtual avatars, automated news summarisation, conversational interfaces, automated AI agents, and spatial computing.
Schibsted Futures Lab was established almost two years ago with the intention to explore scenarios that may impact Schibsted. Schibsted Futures Lab is headed by Andreas Bengtsson, who was one one the panel participants at MediaFutures Annual Meeting 2023.
““And note: The name is Schibsted Futures Lab, not Future Lab. The “s” in the name underlines that there are multiple possible futures, not only one. We don’t pretend to know the answer, but will be exploring different directions,” says Andreas Bengtsson at the launch of Futures Lab.
The lecture is open for all and takes place at Lauritz Meltzers Hus in SV-bygget, Auditorium Storetinget 1st floor. No sign up required.

Christie Conference 2024
2024-04-23 08:00 - 17:00 | UiB Universitetsaulaen and online
The Christie Conference aims to be UiB’s key forum connecting research, politics, administration, culture, society, and business. Held annually in late April at the University Aula, it’s named after Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie, founder of Bergen Museum, a prominent political figure, and a bridge between the museum and societal stakeholders. On Tuesday, April 23rd, the Christie Conference 2024 takes place at the University Aula.
This year, our focus turns to Europe, asking: What will Europe look like in 10 years, and how can Bergen and Norway influence its development?
Future of Europe – What Opportunities Lie Ahead?
Europe is a vital part of our identity, offering some of the best in art, culture, research, and humanism. Since the Second World War, and particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, cooperation, shared institutions, and efforts toward peaceful coexistence have made significant progress. Geopolitical changes, such as the pandemic, rising nationalism, deglobalization, and the conflict in Ukraine, have altered this trajectory. Norway now faces a different Europe than it did just five years ago.
At the Christie Conference, we look forward and discuss:
Does Europe possess the tools needed to tackle future challenges? What role does Norway play as an energy supplier, an industrial nation, and in security policy? How can Bergen and Norway contribute to the future of Europe?
We invite you to engaging discussions among key figures in research, society, business, and culture.
The final program and registration will be available in February, but mark your calendars for April 23, 2024.

Overview of Serendipity in Recommender Systems
2024-04-26 11:15 - 12:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures and UiBs research group DARS which stands for Behavioral Data Analytics & Recommender Systems, is inviting to a seminar with the postdoctoral researcher Denis Kotkov from the University of Helsinki. Kotkov is working on recommender systems, exploratory search, user experience and machine learning.
In this seminar he will provide an overview of the Serendipity in Recommender Systems.
Abstract:
“Have you ever wondered why services like Spotify, Netflix or YouTube keep showing you recommendations on the same topic over and over again? One of the reasons for that is the lack of serendipity in recommender systems of these services. Recommender systems are software tools that suggest items, such as audio recordings or videos, of interest to users. Meanwhile, serendipity is the property of these systems, which indicates the degree, to which they suggest items that pleasantly surprise users. In this talk, I will provide an overview of serendipity in recommender systems. In particular, I will talk about how the concept of serendipity has been defined and measured in recommender systems, and what experiments have been conducted to investigate this concept. I will also touch on recommendation algorithms designed to suggest serendipitous items and discuss future directions of the top.”
More about Denis Kotkov.
The talk will take place at MediaFutures headquarter and takes 30 minutes, plus a 15-minute-long Q&A session. The seminar will also be streamed. You can find the link below.

NMD: AI and the media industry: Where do we stand? Where do we go?
2024-05-02 10:00 - 14:00 | Dovregubben, Grieghallen
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, it sparked a rapid democratization of generative AI technology. It also marked the beginning of a new era for the media industry.
This session is lead by technology and news leaders from four major Norwegian media companies sharing the impact that the rapid AI development has had on their companies and the media industry in general so far.
MediaFutures Steering Board Member Pål Nedregotten (NRK), Juan Carlos Lopez Calvet (Schibsted), Jan Thoresen (Labrador CMS), and Markus Jensen (Amedia) will delve into the challenges and opportunities that AI technology brings them. How has the technology changed the way they work? What are the biggest differences in their AI strategies? And, importantly, what lies ahead for AI in Norwegian media production?
The conversation will be moderated by Sofie Braseth Guldbrandsen, editorial project manager at Aftenposten and chair of Nona.
This session is part of the Nordic Media Days and requires a conference ticket.

NMD: Media Survey 2024: American Conditions
2024-05-02 12:45 - 2024-05-04 13:45 | Grieghallen
As part of this years Nordic Media Days, MediaFutures associate professor Erik Knudsen will present the Medieundersøkelse.
Fall 2024 marks another presidential election in the United States, prompting this year’s Media Survey to delve into the media habits of the American populace and their level of trust in the press. How and from where do Americans gather political information – and how critical are they of their sources? How do they perceive the degree of freedom of expression and societal polarization? Are they affected by cancel culture, and if so, how? The responses from the U.S. will be juxtaposed against the critical media literacy of the Norwegian population. Are we inching towards what can be termed “American conditions”? Are there segments of the population with media habits more aligned with those of Americans than others? We will also explore the extent to which Norwegian and American populations feel represented in media coverage. Do they have a voice in societal debates, and do they find it useful to exercise their right to vote? The survey also examines how artificial intelligence has influenced media coverage, trust in the media, and media literacy. What are journalists’ attitudes towards this tool compared to the average citizen on the street? Are Norwegian media professionals, Norwegians, and Americans equally adept at distinguishing between content created by AI and by humans?
The 2024 Media Survey is conducted among a representative sample of the population in the United States, as well as members of the Norwegian Union of Journalists, the Norwegian Editors’ Association, and a selection of other individuals in Norway.

NMD: ChatGPT, Copilot & Bard – How do Large Language Models Work?
2024-05-02 16:00 - 16:40 | Troldtog, Grieghallen
Large language models have taken over Norwegian media companies, and the technology is being used in increasingly more phases of news production, from idea development, transcription, translation, to summarization.
But what exactly is a language model, and how do they work? Samia Touileb is an associate professor in language technology at the Department of Information and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, works in SFI MediaFutures and is an expert on language models. In this session, she will “open the hood” and show us what lies inside the large language models.
What is so-called deep learning? What architectures are hidden between our input and the model’s output? Where are the language models’ training data sourced from? And what ethical blind spots and problematic biases exist in this data?
The session is part of the Nordic Media Days and required a conference ticket.

Master Student Demonstration
2024-05-03 10:00 - 12:30 | Media City Bergen, Atrium
UiBs media network Teklab is organising the first ever Master Student Demo at the program for media and interaction design (MIX). The event will take place in the Atrium in Media City Bergen from 10.00 to 12.30 on Friday May 3rd.
This is an event in the newly established “Innovation Days” at the MIX program. This time around our master students will present their value propositions and minimum viable prototypes. The audience will give them input and help them to learn as much as possible about the potential for value creation in their projects. The event is free for all, but you have to register. The deadline for lunch registration is Thursday May 2nd at 12.00. Please register here and you will get a free lunch.
The “Innovation Days” is a joint effort from alle the teachers at MIX plus the administration and the students themselves. The event is organized by the program board for the media and interaction design (MIX) program at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, with professor Lars Nyre as the main organizer. The Infomedia department and TekLab sponsors the event with a free lunch for participants and audience alike
Program schedule
The event takes place in the Atrium of Media City Bergen on Friday May 3rd from 10.00 – 12.30.
10.00 – 10.05. Introduction by MIX program chair Lars Nyre.
10.05 – 10.30. “Introduction to Open Innovation: Harnessing Collective Intelligence for Innovative Solutions”. Lecture by Joao Ribeiro.
10.30 – 11.00. Demo of value propositions by the first year students (MIX303). Introduction by Joao Ribeiro. The students will stand in front of their posters and explain their project and talk to audience members. There will be around 15 separate projects (see details below).
11.00 – 11.30. Demo of minimum viable prototypes by the second year students (MIX350). Introduction by Joao Ribeiro. The students will stand in front of their posters and technical equipment (f.ex. computer screens and VR gear) and explain their projects. The audience members will be able to test the prototypes themselves. There will be 7 separate projects (see details below).
11.30 – 12.30. Free lunch and countinued mingling around the stands. Conclusion by UiB Innovation Pilots Johannes Helleve and Stine Lines.

Webinar on EU elections and how to prevent interference
2024-05-03 12:15 - 15:30 | digital
The EU elections, Europe Day, Victory Day and Eurovision are approaching – and so are the opportunities for spreading false information and fomenting polarization. That’s why Faktabari, in cooperation with its NORDIS partners, is organizing a free webinar for journalists on the EU elections and election interference on May 3.
The webinar will be held on International Press Freedom Day from 12:15 to 15:30. The webinar to be held on May 3 has an interesting coverage of both domestic and Nordic experts. All Finnish journalists and journalist students who want to update their knowledge about EU elections, disinformation and fact-checking tools are welcome to the lines.
Also MediaFutures Ph.D candidate Sohail Khan is present and will present his research on deep fake detection as well as NORDIS.2, a project he works on together with UiB-infomedia associate professor Duc-Tien Dang-Nguyen.
Between 2022 and 2023, the Norwegian fact-checking organization played a crucial role in providing guidance to MediaFutures’ PhD candidate, Sohail Ahmed Khan, as he developed two prototypes: an image classifier and a language detector. Both tools have earned great acclaim among fact checkers and journalists, including those operating in war-torn Ukraine. One of the tools Sohail will showcase at the webinar is the tank classifier.
The event is hosted and held mainly in Finnish. Sohail Ahmed Khan will speak in English.
Program:
12.15–12.30
Opening Words
Pipsa Havula & Joonas Pörsti/ Faktabaari
12.30–13.00
What kind of disinformation narratives circulate about the EU? What can we learn from the Eurovision Song Contest?
Andreas Önnerfors/ Director of Fact-Checking Program at Sweden’s Fojo Institute
13.00–13.30
What is important for journalists to know before the EU elections?
Niina Saloranta/ Press Officer at the European Parliament’s Finland Office. Saloranta provides an overview of the EU institutions, how decision-making works, what happens before and after the elections, and gives examples of journalists’ sources of information.
13.30–13.50
How to find EU news.
Hannele Muilu/ Yle’s Brussels Correspondent
13.50–14.00
Break
14.00–14.15
What is EFCSN? How is the European fact-checking network preparing for the elections?
Thomas Hedin/ Managing Editor at Tjekdet and Board Member of EFCSN
14.15–14:35
AI tools for journalists.
Sohail Ahmed Khan/ PhD Candidate at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen. The University of Bergen/MediaFutures has developed AI tools in collaboration with the Norwegian fact-checking organization Faktisk to assist journalists. Sohail Ahmed Khan presents them.
14.35–14:55
Insights into the Digivaalivahti project by Faktabaari and CheckFirst and their findings so far.
Pipsa Havula & Guillaume Kuster
14:55–15:30
Summary of the most important fact-checking tools currently available
Katja Lehtisaari, University Lecturer in Journalism at Tampere University, discusses fact-checking courses for journalism students and future collaboration within the NORDIS project framework.
Future plans
The event concludes at 15:30.
To register for the webinar, please follow the link.

Academic breakfast with Erik Knudsen
2024-05-23 09:00 - 09:45 | Vrimearealet, SV-bygget, 3.etasje
The SV-faculty invites all students and employees at UiB to attend Erik Knudsens presentation about news avoiders in Norway.
Have you found yourself consciously avoiding news or specific news topics over the past year? For instance, have you refrained from clicking on stories about the dire situations in Ukraine or Gaza? If so, you’re not alone. New figures from the Media Survey 2024 reveal that a whopping 34 percent of Norwegians are classified as “news avoiders.” Is it a democratic issue that so many people are dodging the news? Should news avoiders feel guilty? Erik Knudsen doesn’t think so. He discusses his research on people’s selective media consumption and news avoidance, citing results from the Media Survey 2024 recently presented at the Nordic Media Days. Knudsen will also offer insights from an ongoing MediaFutures study on whether so-called “constructive news” – solution-oriented news that emphasizes hope and possibilities over negativity – could serve as a kind of “antidote” to reduce news avoidance.
Erik Knudsen is an associate professor at the Department of Information and Media Studies and works as work package 1 leader in SFI MediaFutures.

Ethical considerations regarding the use of AI
2024-05-29 11:00 - 2024-05-30 17:00 | Kode Permanenten, Nordahl Bruns gate 9, Bergen
Western Norwegian Film Centre, in collaboration with the Zephyr Media Fund, BIFF, and the Film Association, invites you to industry days and a film festival at Kode Permanenten on May 29th and 30th in Bergen, where we gather the film industry in the region for inspiring lectures, presentations of fresh film and TV projects, and professional updates!

Associate Professor Samia Touileb from the University of Bergen will shed light on ethical considerations regarding the use of AI. What challenges may arise from the use of tools like ChatGPT and OpenAI in the development of a film idea, contracts, or a script? And will it hinder artistic creativity if one must consider these ethical issues?
Samia Touileb is an associate professor in language technology at the Department of Information and Media Studies and holds a master’s degree in artificial intelligence and a doctorate in language technology. She has previously been a researcher at MediaFutures – UiB and a postdoctoral fellow at the Language Technology Group (LTG) at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo.
Her research interests include fairness and justice in language technology models, information extraction, automatic summarization generation, and the application of language technology and machine learning methods in social science research.

International Workshop: “AI & Political Conflict”
2024-05-30 09:00 - 2024-05-31 17:00 | Media Futures at Media City Bergen, 3rd Floor, SUJO Undervisningsrom
The Boston-Bergen Forum on Digital Futures invites to a two-day hybrid event, bringing together prominent scholars to discuss the impact of AI-based platforms and their underlying technological, normative, and economic principles, on political discourse, deep disagreement, and conflict.
We are happy to invite to our second international workshop “AI & Political Conflict”, a two-day, hybrid event scheduled for 30th May (Thursday) and 31st May (Friday) 2024, from 9:00 to 17:00 (CET), and taking place at MediaFutures Research Centre as well as the Philosophy Department at UiB.
Our goal is to bring together prominent scholars from different disciplines to discuss the impact of AI-based platforms, and their underlying technological, normative, and economic principles, on political discourse, deep disagreement, and conflict.
The event will draw on the Boston-Bergen Forum on Digital Futures—an international research network among the ‘Culture, Society & Politics’ and the ‘Practical Philosophy’ research groups at UiB’s Philosophy Department, SFI MediaFutures Research Centre Bergen, the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston, and the MIT Program Human Rights and Technology.
Confirmed speakers for the event include

Keynote by Natali Helberger (Amsterdam)
Gloria Origgi (CNRS Paris)
Anna Maria Lorusso (Bologna)
João Vieira Magalhães (Groningen)
Anat Biletzki (Quinnipiac)
Leif Hemming Pedersen (Roskilde).
Carl Öhman (Uppsala)
Eugenia Stamboliev (Vienna)
Mark Thomas Young (UiB)
Alec Stubbs (UMass Boston)
Maria Brincker (UMass Boston)
Filipe Campello (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco)
Jacob Burley (UMass Boston & Harvard)

To join digitally, please open the following zoom link.

Download the abstracts

First Workshop Day, Thu., May 30th / Media City, 3rd Floor / SUJO Undervisningsrom
09.00 am.: Welcome Notes
Section I: Keynote
09.15 am.: Natali Helberger (Amsterdam, online): “ChatGPT: What is the Impact of LLMs on our Democracy?”
09.45 am.: Q&A
Section II: Algorithmic Injustice
10.15 am.: Jacob Burley (UMass Boston & Harvard): “Algorithmic Agency!?”
10:45 am.: Carl Öhman (Uppsala, online): “Gods of Data: Language Models as the personified Authority of the Past”
11.15 am.: Q&A
12.00 am.: Lunch break
Section II: Algorithmic Recognition
13.15 pm.: Leif Hemming Pedersen (Roskilde): “Recognition Struggles in the (In)visibilization Society”
13.45 pm.: João Vieira Magalhães (Groningen, online): “The End of Recognition Theory?”
14.15 pm.: Q&A
15.00 pm.: Coffee break
Section III: Political Technologies
15.15 pm.: Mark Thomas Young (UiB) “What’s Missing from AI Ethics: Economics, Politics and Power”
15.45 pm.: Eugenia Stamboliev (Vienna, online): “Trustworthy AI as a Politicized Conflict”
16:15 pm.: Q&A
17.00 pm.: End

Second Workshop Day, Fri., May 31st / Media City, 3rd Floor / SUJO Undervisningsrom
09.45 am.: Welcome Note
Section I: Algorithmic Epistemology
10:00 am.: Gloria Origgi (CNRS Paris) “How Algorithms Deconstruct Collective Hermeneutical Resources”
10:30 am.: Anna Maria Lorusso (Bologna) “Facts, Fictions, Gossips and other Truth Claims”
11.15 am.: Q&A
12.00 am.: Lunch break
Section II: Activism and Philosophy in the Age of AI
13.15 pm.: Maria Brincker (UMass Boston): “Responsible Agency and the Nature of Surveillance Effects”
13.45 pm.: Anat Biletzki (Quinnipiac) “Israel 2023: A Tale of Two Conflicts”
14.15 pm.: Q&A
15.00 pm.: Coffee break
Section III: Artificial Relations
15.15 pm.: Filipe Campello (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, online): “Artificial Affects: Making AI a tool for Social Freedom”
15.45 pm.: Alec Stubbs (UMass Boston, online): “AI Friendship: On the Uncontrollability of the Other”

Humaniora meets Artifical Intelligence
2024-05-31 09:00 - 15:00 | Universitetet i Bergen, Storsalen, Nygårdsgaten 5
UHR-Humaniora and the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Bergen invite to a conference on artificial intelligence and the humanities on May 31st.
The event will be in Norwegian.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has opened up new possibilities for how we communicate, create art, and participate in democracy. However, while the development of AI is often led by quantitative disciplines, there is a growing need for insights from the humanities. The deep understanding of texts and cultural expressions provided by the humanities is crucial for guiding the development of AI in ways that both respect and reflect human experience and cultural diversity.
The goal of the conference is to emphasize the important role of the humanities in the development and understanding of AI. Therefore, we aim to create a forum where humanities researchers can share knowledge, explore new ideas and methods, and build networks that can strengthen the humanities’ contribution to AI research. The conference will thus shed light on the ethical, cultural, and societal implications of AI, and how the humanities contribute and can contribute to this exploration.
The program is still under development and will be updated and adjusted in spring 2024.
Program
Konferansier: journalist og tidligere kultur- og debattredaktør i Bergens Tidende, Hilde Sandvik.
09:00 Velkommen
Pinar Heggernes, prorektor ved Universitetet i Bergen, åpner konferansen sammen med Frode Helland, dekan ved Det humanistiske fakultet ved UiO og leder for UHR-Humaniora, og Camilla Brautaset, dekan ved Det humanistiske fakultet ved UiB.
Hvorfor trenger KI humaniora?
Hva er språkmodeller egentlig?
Samia Touileb er førsteamanuensis i språkteknologi og forsker hovedsakelig på etiske og sosiale utfordringer ved språkteknologiske modeller.  I dette foredraget viser hun hvordan språkmodeller trenes, hva slags data de er bygget på, og hvordan de stadig blir mer avanserte. Touileb viser eksempler på hva språkmodeller kan brukes til, i tilleg til å dele noen eksempler som illustrerer mulige utfordringer og problemstillinger ved bruk av språkmodeller.
Kan kunstig intelligens forstå språk?
ChatGPT og andre store språkmodeller viser imponerende resultater i en rekke oppgaver, som for eksempel spørsmålsbesvarelse, oversettelse og oppsummering. Selv oppgaver som å skrive dikt eller lage korte historier blir nå utført av språkmodeller. Men hvordan forstår egentlig en språkmodell innholdet i en tekst? Pierre Lison er sjefsforsker ved Norsk Regnesentral hvor han jobber med maskinlæring og språkteknologi. Han inviterer oss med til en utforsking av hva som skiller en språkmodell fra menneskelig språkforståelse.
Er kunstig intelligens bra for samisk?
Hva kan store språkmodeller lære om språk med begrenset tekstmateriale, og hvordan påvirkes resultatene når modellene forsøker å kompensere for mangel på tekst ved å inkludere alle språk i samme analyse? Hilde Sandvik møter Trond Trosterud til samtale om Hvordan kunstig intelligens vil påvirke små språk som samisk.  Trond Trosterud er professor i samisk språkteknologi og leder av Giellatekno, Senter for samisk språkteknologi ved Universitetet i Tromsø.
10:00 Pause
10:30 Keynote:
The AI Mirror: Reclaiming our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
Shannon Vallor , professor ved Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies increasingly claim to be able to tell us who we are, what we want, what we can do, and where we will go. Yet these predictions reflect only the choices we have already made, not those still open to us. In this talk, Professor Vallor acknowledges the power and utility of these new algorithmic mirrors, while exposing the deception in their promise to define humanity and guide our shared futures.
11:30 Lunsj
Kunst, medier og KI
12:30 KI-forestillinger og humanioras sentrale rolle: Mellom hype, dystopi og hverdagsliv
Taina Bucher, professor og forskningsleder ved Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon ved Universitetet i Oslo. I dette innlegget tar utgangsounkt i “HumAIn: Reimagining AI” som er et nytt møtested for tverrfaglig forskning og utdanning innen humanistiske perspektiver på KI. Hubben utforsker både eksisterende historier og narrativ omkring KI, i tillegg til å ha et uttalt mål om å utvikle nye forestillinger og fortellinger omkring hva KI kan og bør være.
AI as Artistic Intelligence
David Jhave Johnston is a digital-poet writing in emergent domains: A.I., 3D, VR, and code. Author-programmer of the multimedia human + A.I. writing art-project ReRites (Anteism Books, 2019), the theoretical-history Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry’s Ontological Implications (MIT Press, 2016), and many online multimedia literary explorations at www.glia.ca. He is currently employed as an Ai-narrative researcher at the UiB Centre for Digital Narrative from August 2023-26 on a team investigating Extending Digital Narrative. He will show and discuss a couple examples of #genAI as “artistic intelligence”, using AI to simulate and stimulate insights into questions of identity.
AIwriting: Creative Practice as a Critical Method for Investigating Large Language Models
In this talk Scott Rettberg explores AI chatbots and text-to-image generation systems as writing environments, and in turn considers how the production of sustained creative works in these environments can serve as critical digital humanities method that reveals the structure, biases, operations and effects of the models themselves. It considers the importance and function of human writing, or “cyborg authorship” within these computational environments, and their potentialities for new genres of dialogic digital narrative. Scott Rettberg is the Director of the Center for Digital Narrative and a professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen.
13:30 Pause
14:00 Shaking the black box: Creative approaches to generative models
In this talk Gabriele de Seta showcases some creative approaches to generative models, which use machine learning to synthesize various kinds of content such as text, images, videos or sounds. Inspired by Malte Ziewitz’s idea of “shaking the black box”, he proposes to a more critical and reflexive interaction with these new computational actors. Gabriele de Seta is, technically, a sociologist. He holds a PhD from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. De Seta was part of the ERC-funded project “Machine Vision in Everyday Life” at the University of Bergen and is currently leading the ALGOFOLK TMS-funded project at the University of Bergen
Avsluttende diskusjon
Hilde Sandvik inviterer til oppsummering og paneldiskusjon med:
Shannon Vallor, professor at Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh
Pinar Heggernes, prorektor og leder for styringsgruppe UiB AI
Taina Bucher, professor og forskningsleder ved Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon ved Universitetet i Oslo
Samia Touileb, Samia Touileb, Førsteamanuensis i språkteknologi ved Universitetet i Bergen
Scott Rettberg, Professor and Director for Center for Digtial Narrativ ved Universitetet I Bergen
Konferansen avsluttes klokken 15:00
Programkomite for konferansen: professor Jill Walker Rettberg (UiB), professor Petter Bae Brandtzæg (UiO) og professor, prodekan Aurora Hoel (NTNU) og professor Gillian C. Ramchand (UiT).

Political news analysis by YouTubers : Initial results from quantitative processing of a textual corpus
2024-05-31 12:00 - 13:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures Work Package 1 and The Network for culture, inequality and democracy (KUD/CID) at Infomedia invite to a public lecture on the topic of alternative political analysis on YouTube, given by Quentin Gilliotte, Professeur Junior at Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris, France) There will be time for a Q&A.
The productions on digital platforms are becoming an increasingly significant source of information. Within this context, a large number of actors on digital platforms offer analyses and commentary on political current events. Within the Francophone space, we find video creators such as HugoDécrypte, Tatiana Ventôse, Usul, and Gaspard G. These actors place themselves in opposition to traditional media (television, radio) : they advocate for an “alternative” way of handling information, whether in terms of the audience they target, the topics they cover, or the formats they use. How do these different actors address political current events? Considering both economic models and political positions, what topics are mobilized?
The communication will proceed in two stages. Firstly, I will present the method for constructing the corpus of selected channels through data extraction from the YouTube API, utilizing network analysis tools. Secondly, I will present a mapping of the topics addressed by these different video creators based on the automated textual analysis of a corpus of 8740 transcribed videos (representing all videos published by the selected actors between January and July 2023) using a topic modeling method (Latent Dirichlet Allocation).

One size fits one - accessibility through preferences
2024-06-04 11:00 - 11:20 | Remote
Yngvar Nordberg, representing TV 2 Skole AS and WP4 on Media Content Interaction & Accessibility, will be an invited presenter at the COST LEAD-ME Seminar on “Media Accessibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, taking place on June 4, 2024, at the St. Raphael Resort, Limassol, Cyprus.

Remote participants are welcome:
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/mdr-wyvp-ccm
Yngvar Nordberg, TV 2 Skole AS and WP4, title:
One size fits one – accessibility through preferences

In 1992, all state-run special schools were closed with the exception of schools for sign language students. The ideology was that special education should take place in a classroom setting together with peers at the local school. In the compulsory primary school, achieving a ‘school for all’, or one that is fully inclusive, is an important policy goal and part of the official aims behind the system of education for all children in Norway. TV 2 Schools educational web-service – elevkanalen.no – has for more than 10 years developed an API that governs a very successful preference-dashboard. Teacher set preferences on his/her pupils. Eye-gaze navigation, one-button navigation, two-button navigation etc.; symbol-support; background colors, font color – It is a user-centric design backed up by national activities in Standards Norway Committee 607 and ongoing work in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 36/WG 7 – metadata for individualized accessibility. To achieve true accessibility – AI is obviously the road ahead. Machine learning that automatically detects the users needs is already a component in our one fits one approach, but we need more. This goes for navigation – AI-driven eye-gaze calibration AI-driven tasks like alt-text to pictures, and captions to film for the blind; text-levels etc. We believe our activities already has a proven potential outside our own organisation in Norway and would love to present them in a Lead-Me – context.
More on COST LEAD-ME:

LEAD-ME aims to help European stakeholders in the field of Media Accessibility to meet legal milestones requested by European legislation. Researchers, engineers and scholars as well as businesses and policy makers will be empowered by LEAD-ME with a common and unique platform which will collect, create, and disseminate innovative technologies and solutions, best practices and guidelines.
https://lead-me-cost.eu/

AI Regulation and Governance: A Cross-Jurisdictional Approach
2024-06-05 08:30 - 17:30 | Domus Bibliotheca, Karl Johans gate 47, 0162, Oslo
MediaFutures associate professor Samie Touileb is giving a keynote speech on AI technology at this conference.
With the EU’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act being adopted and various major jurisdictions deliberating AI policy at both national and international levels, this conference provides a timely platform to navigate the myriad legal and policy issues AI presents, from intellectual property and tort law to safety legislation. The conference contributes to shaping the discourse on the governance of artificial intelligence in Europe and beyond.
Preliminary Programme
08:30: Registration and Welcome Coffee
Opening Session
09:00: Opening Remarks (Tobias Mahler)
09:10: Key Note: AI Technology (Samia Touileb)
09:45: Break
Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property
(Chair: Ole-Andreas Rognstad)
09:55: Copyright Protection of AI-Generated Outputs (Tito Rendas)
10:30: AI and Copyright (Guro Bøe Linnet)
11:05 Break
Digital Constitutionalism and the AI Goveranance Discourse
(Chair: Ingunn Ikdahl TBC)
11:20: AI and Digital Constitutionalism (Giovanni de Gregorio)
11:55: Rhetoric and Reality in AI Policy and Practice (Heather Broomfield)
12:30: Lunch Break
AI and Civil Liability
(Chair: Johannes Hygen Meyer)
13:30: The EU’s Proposed AI Liability Directive (Henrique Sousa Antunes)
14:05: AI Liability and Norwegian Tort Law (Anne Marie Frøseth)
14.40 Break
The EU AI Act and its Alternatives
(Chair: Samson Esayas)
15:00: Lessons Learned from the Drafting of the AI Act (Vera Lucia Raposo)
15:35: Decent Law: Envisioning a Decentralized, AI-optimized Legal Regime (Samuel Becher)
16:10: Break
Concluding Session
(Chair Rebecca Schmidt)
16:25: AI Risk in an International Context (Tobias Mahler)
17:00 Concluding Discussion
17:25 Closing Remarks (Henrique Sousa Antunes)
17:30 Reception

Registration closed
Attendance is gratis but the conference is completely booked. You can sign up for a growing waiting list until May 26th 2024 via this online form. Stay tuned for information about web streaming!
The conference is organised by the UiO’s Research Group on Law and Technology and held under the aegis of the research project ‘Vulnerability in the Robot Society’ (VIROS). The VIROS project is run by the Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law (NRCCL) in collaboration with the Robots and Intelligent Systems (ROBIN) group at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. It is funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Transparency, Privacy, and Fairness in Recommender Systems
2024-06-06 12:00 - 13:00 | MediaFutures HQ, 3rd Floor, Tower 1, Media City, Media Futures HQ, 3rd floor, Bergen, 5008
MediaFutures has invited Dipl.Ing. Dr.techn. Dominik Kowald from Graz, Austria to talk about transparency, privacy and fairness in recommender systems. He is research area manager in Fair AI at the Know-Center and senior researcher and lecturer – ISDS (TU Graz).
Recommender systems have become a pervasive part of our daily online experience by analyzing past usage behavior to suggest potential relevant content, e.g., music, movies, or books. Today, recommender systems are one of the most widely used applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Therefore, regulations and requirements for trustworthy artificial intelligence, for example, the European AI Act, which includes notions such as transparency, privacy, and fairness are also highly relevant for the design, development, evaluation, and deployment of recommender systems in practice.
This talk elaborates on aspects related to these three notions in the light of recommender systems, namely: (i) transparency and cognitive models, (ii) privacy and limited preference information, and (iii) fairness and popularity bias in recommender systems. Specifically, with respect to aspect (i), I highlight the usefulness of incorporating psychological theories for a transparent design process of recommender systems. Additionally, I show that cognitive models can further contribute to transparency aspects by illustrating how the models’ components have contributed to generate the recommendation lists. In aspect (ii), I study and address the trade-off between accuracy and privacy in differentially-private recommendations.
Dominic Kowald presents a novel recommendation approach for collaborative filtering based on an efficient neighborhood reuse concept, which reduces the number of users that need to be protected with differential privacy. Furthermore, he outlines the related issue of limited availability of user preference information, e.g., click data, in the settings of session-based recommendations, by using variational autoencoders. With respect to aspect (iii), he discusses popularity bias in collaborative filtering-based recommender systems and shows that the recommendation frequency of an item is positively correlated with this item’s popularity. This also leads to the unfair treatment of users with little interest in popular content, since these users receive worse recommendation accuracy results than users with high interest in popular content. Besides, Kowald presents results of an online study on popularity bias mitigation in the field of news article recommendations. He closes the talk by illustrating the trade-off between privacy and popularity bias in recommender systems and by outlining future research possibilities in this direction.
After the talk, Kowald will present the Know-Center, and some of their success stories and lessons learned of applied research projects with industry partners.

Making sense of news audiences and their experiences: Practices and responses to news in the age of datafication
2024-06-18 09:00 - 11:00 | Room 514, Fosswinckels gate 6
Welcome to the Final Seminar of our Ph.D Marianne Borchgrevink-Brækhus.
Commentator: Assistant Professor Joëlle Swart (University of Groningen).
On June 18th, the Department of Information Science and Media Studies organizes a PhD Final Seminar for candidate Marianne Borchgrevink-Brækhus. The Final Seminar takes place toward the end of the PhD period, when the candidate is a few months away from submitting their thesis.
Commentator: Joëlle Swart, University of Groningen.
Title: Making sense of news audiences and their experiences: Practices and responses to news in the age of datafication
This thesis explores how people relate to news as experience. I ask how news audiences’ experiences can be captured and how these experiences can help provide a more profound understanding of how people relate to news in everyday life.
Hidden practices
While audiences have become increasingly central to journalistic practices and academic discussions about journalism, the understanding of audiences’ practices and behaviors are paradoxically dominated by professional measures and quantification of user data like clicks, time spent, and sales rather than audiences’ own experiences with news. A central aim of this thesis is to explore hidden aspects of people’s news consumption not found in digital traces and thereby advance a phenomenologically grounded understanding of experiences that shape interactions with news.
To answer these questions, I have conducted recurring interviews and media diaries with news audiences, supplemented with video ethnography and data donations. This empirical material is analyzed through four articles. The first article explicates the overarching term ‘media experience’ as an analytical concept to capture key insights about mediated lives in digital societies. The second article zooms in on the experiences of young adults who do not pay for news and their considerations for not subscribing to digital news subscriptions. The third article critically assesses the metric of ‘time spent’ by analyzing how people navigate when reading news online and how short bursts of news use relate to meaningful experiences. Finally, the fourth article offers a conceptualization of ‘news experience’ as an analytical lens to understand how people relate to news in everyday life, empirically grounded in six distinct forms of news experience.
A holistic approach
The thesis highlights the significance of a holistic approach to understanding people’s complex practices and behaviors. Whereas research and news professionals predominantly have made sense of people’s news use through cognitive approaches that highlight agency and intentionality, this thesis also emphasizes experiential qualities, which encompasses sensory, affective, perceptional, technological, and social dimension.

Addressing the Next-Poster Problem: A Hybrid Recommender System for Streaming Platforms
2024-06-20 10:00 - 11:35 | Møterom 1 MCB
09:30 Pre-discussion (attendants: Mehdi Elahi, Benjamin Kille)
10:00 start explanation followed by thesis presentation (attendants: all)
Around 10:40 Interrogation (attendants: Alvsvåg, Mehdi Elahi, Benjamin Kille)
Around 11:15 Consultation between censors (attendants: Mehdi Elahi, Benjamin Kille)
Around 11:35: Results (attendants: all)
Title: Addressing the Next-Poster Problem: A Hybrid Recommender System for Streaming Platforms
Abstract:
Recommendation strategies in the Movie domain is varied, but has been shown to aid users in finding content they like. On video streaming-platforms such as TV 2 Play, the user is exposed to several different arenas where they can find something they would like to watch, be that the landing-page of the streaming site, or a suggestion for something more to watch after they concluded a movie or series. These are all areas where Recommender strategies can recommend something based on either the preferences of the user, or in the case of the concluded movie or series, something more to watch based on what they just watched. This latter aspects, being what I refer to as the next-poster problem in this thesis, is not a largely explored area of research, where previous actors have simply utilized the already established Collaborative Filtering (CF) model concerned with the user’s preferences without considering what the user just watched. Here I show that a solution to the next-poster problem is to combine the CF model with a Sequence Aware approach based on Markov Chains, finding an increase in implied user satisfaction over the baseline CF approach. Through an online evaluation on the streaming platform TV 2 Play, I show that using a Hybrid approach to solve the next-poster problem rather than a traditional CF model leads to a lessening in user engagement such as CTR, but an increase in the clicks resulting in a user actually watching the content, this being our implied user satisfaction. Further as a result of this online evaluation, I am able to show that its possible to find the best configuration for a Hybrid model based on Sequence Aware and CF approaches deployed in a real life scenario, through offline evaluation. The results allows me to showcase the importance of considering Sequence of items when recommending for the next-poster problem, and to show that an offline evaluation can imply results in a real world scenario, when considering the Movie domain. Although an improvement, this thesis also shows that there are many more avenues to consider for the next-poster problem.

AI Solutions for Local Journalism Challenges: A Design Thinking Approach and Beyond
2024-06-28 11:15 - 12:00 | Online
WP3 invites to a digital seminar on AI for local journalism. Speaker is the Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Reshmi G. Pillai from Vrije University Amsterdam.
Journalism has been transformed by technological advancements over the last two decades, causing significant economic disruption among other challenges. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has accelerated this paradigm shift, presenting tremendous opportunities and equally profound challenges to news organizations worldwide. This transition poses a particular concern to regional and local media organizations, as they are often at increased risk of being at the disadvantaged end of the technological knowledge and adoption. Local journalism, however, remains a vital component of democratic societies, by voicing the issues and concerns from local communities, and contextualizing global/national news stories, thus engaging news audience better with collective discourses.
Our research investigates, in collaboration with a regional broadcaster in the Netherlands, how AI can best enhance journalistic processes, while maintaining the agency with the journalists. We conducted design thinking sprints with the journalists of the broadcaster, starting by identifying the challenges within the news-making process, and moving towards clearly defined problem statements and solution approaches. The talk also presents our further research motivated by these findings from the design thinking sprints. We outline a prototype to build a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system from information sources such as past news reports, to provide background information for an incoming news story. Also, addressing the problem of news content and headline optimization, we analyse the textual features, on a dataset of ~500k tweets, associated with audience engagement, for national and regional news media within the Netherlands, as pointers for generating engaging content.
This research is part of the consortium project ‘Towards Responsible AI for Local Journalism’ (link here) with researchers from Vrije University Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen (the Netherlands), LMU Munich (Germany), and University of Stavanger (Norway).
Speaker: Dr Reshmi G. Pillai
Ms. Pillai focuses on the adoption and implementation of artificial intelligence techniques, specifically natural language processing in the context of local journalism. Her research interests are in analyzing text using natural language processing methods for a better understanding of behaviors and states of individuals and the society. Previously, she was a Lecturer at the Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, assisting in the Master’s program in Information Studies (Data Science track). She holds a PhD from the University of Wolverhampton for her thesis on the expressions of psychological stress in tweets.

You can join the meeting via zoom here.

Advancing Image and Video Understanding Beyond Traditional Paradigms: Vocabulary-Free Classification and Zero-Shot Temporal Localization
2024-09-03 12:30 - 14:00 | Ulrike Pihls hus, Seminarrom 2B
The Department of Information Science and Media Studies and the I2S research group welcomes you to this seminar with Paolo Rota of University of Trento.
The rapid evolution of vision-language models is transforming the landscape of image and video understanding, going beyond traditional classification and localization paradigms. We will explore two recent methodologies that challenge the conventional reliance on predefined vocabularies and training data. The first part of the talk introduces the concept of Vocabulary-Free Image Classification (VIC), a novel approach that assigns classes to images without the constraints of a fixed vocabulary. We will delve into the challenges of operating within an unconstrained semantic space containing millions of concepts and present Category Search from External Databases (CaSED), a training-free method that leverages external vision-language databases for efficient and accurate classification. In the second part, we will shift focus to Test-Time Zero-Shot Temporal Action Localization (ZS-TAL), which tackles the problem of identifying and locating unseen actions in untrimmed videos without the need for annotated training data. We will introduce the Test-Time adaptation for Temporal Action Localization (T3AL) approach, which adapts a pre-trained Vision and Language Model (VLM) to perform action localization in a self-supervised manner, significantly improving generalization across diverse video domains. Finally we will show how LLMs can be used as a sort of orchestrator to solve research problems autonomously, through visual programming.
Paolo is an assistant professor at the Center for Mind and Brain (CIMeC) at the University of Trento. He received his Ph.D. from the same university and has worked as a postdoctoral Marie Curie fellow at TU Wien and as a postdoc at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa. He also worked as an ML researcher at the ProM Facility in Rovereto. He has been an assistant professor at the University of Trento since 2019 and started his tenure track in 2022. His research interests are focused on image and video classification using Vision and Language.

Europe’s Digital Agenda: Is the AI Act the Final Act? In Search of Common Principles
2024-09-06 09:00 - 18:00 | Bergen Global, Jekteviksbakken 31, 5006 Bergen AND Zoom
Over the past five years the European Union legislature has passed a flurry of ambitious directives and regulations dealing with various aspects of Europe’s digital economy: the Digital Single Market (DSM) Directive (2019), the Open Data Directive (2019), the Data Governance Act (2022), the Digital Services Act (2022), the Digital Market Act (2022), the Data Act (2023) and the AI Act (2024).
While these legal instruments touch upon different legal domains, ranging from intellectual property law, freedom of government information and data protection to media regulation, competition law, and consumer protection, there is considerable overlap – and increasing confusion about their reach and scope, the new governance structures they establish, and their underlying policies.
It introduces a ban on high-risk AI technologies, establishes far reaching transparency measures, demands human oversight, prohibits misleading uses of AI, creates new supervisory authorities, and enhances protection of human creators against being “trained” by LLM’s.
This international conference – the first of its kind – searches for common principles and doctrines in Europe’s Digital Agenda, and queries what will be the EU’s next step – if any – in its regulatory adventure in the digital field. It will also compare Europe’s Digital Agenda to developments in the United States and look at the impact of the new European rules on enterprises in the ICT sector in Europe, particularly start-ups.
Programme
8.30-9.00 Registration and coffee
9.00-9.15 Opening (Dean Karl Harlad Søvig)
9.15-9.45 Introduction: Martin Husovec, LSE Law School
Session 1 Fostering the European Data Economy
9.45-10.05 Heather Broomfield, University of Oslo, Are We There Yet? The Legal Evolution of Public Sector Data Sharing
10.05-10.25 Lucie Antoine, LMU University, Munich, The Data Act: Fair access to data and new possibilities for data-driven innovation – or everything more difficult than before?
10.25-10.40 COFFEE BREAK
10.40-11.00 Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam, Text and Data Mining in the DSM-directive
11.00-11.45 Panel discussion and Q&A
11.45-12.45 LUNCH BREAK
Session 2 Platform regulation
12.45-13.05 Torger Kielland, University of Bergen, Article 17 CDSM: Platform liability for copyrighted content – too much or not enough?
13.05-13.25 Benjamin Raue, University of Trier, The Digital Services Act: Liability exemptions in exchange for diligence obligations and public oversight
13.25-13.45 Alexander Iken, European Commission, Digital Markets Act
13.45-14.30 Panel discussion and Q&A
14.30-14.45 COFFEE BREAK
Session 3 Regulating AI
14.45-15.05 Alexander Peukert, Goethe University Frankfurt, The Meta-Regulation of AI through the AI Act
15.05- 15.25 Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen, AI and competition law
15.25-16.00 Pamela Samuelson, UC Berkeley, An American Perspective on AI Regulation
16.00-17.00 Panel discussion and Q&A
17.00 Ending

Organizing committee
Professor Torger Kielland, University of Bergen
Emeritus Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, University of Amsterdam
Assistant Professor Thomas Vinje, University of Bergen
Associate Professor Liliia Oprysk, University of Bergen

Personalisation Day
2024-09-16 08:00 - 2024-09-17 17:00 | Wallenberg Conference Center, Gothenburg, Sweden
We invite all researchers and practitioners in the Nordics to the second Nordic Personalisation day in Wallenberg Conference Center, Gothenburg. We aim on two days full of talks and discussions on ethics, responsibility in personalisation and recommender systems. There will also be plenty of time to meet peers both from industry and research and exchange ideas during the conference during coffee breaks, lunch and after-workshop drinks.
The event starts after lunch on the 16th and ends on the 17th at lunch time. We know there are many innovative academic and industrial labs and hope this workshop can be a step toward creating a Nordic community on this highly relevant topic.
Admittance is free of charge, but registration is required. Please follow the link below to find out more.
The event is funded by Meltzer, SFI MediaFutures and Swedish funding agencies.
