The Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre introduces the importance of a new national digitization strategy and what the government wishes to achieve with the work at a NTNU meeting on next week. AI is a mega important part of the initiative:

- The Prime Minister is accompanied by the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Sigbjørn Gjelsvik and several top-of-the-line players on topics such as artificial intelligence, how to protect against threats in the digital space and how business and the public sector can exploit the value of data, the Prime Minister's office says.  

Dean Ingrid Schjølberg at the IE Faculty at NTNU will lead the discussion with the the ministers and their audience afterwards.

Astonishing results was reported when NorwAI chair Sven Størmer Thaulow (picture) told top Norwegian medie executives of experiences from introducing new AI applications for journalists in the Schibsted company.  The freed hours were won in just three months of applying the new tool. 

The Scandinavian media giant Schibsted are working in close cooperation with NorwAI on developing the first Norwegian based LLM, the NorGLM, currently under training at the IDUN cluster at NTNU. 

Photo: Universitetsavisa 

NorwAI is reaching out to Norwegian media and content producers to build a competitive national model twice the size of the present model being developed by the NTNU consortium. 

The Norwegian Board of Technology, advisors to Parlament and Government, will report on the emergence of large-scale language models as a turning point for the most powerful technology of our time. From left Ellen Strålberg, Michael Riegler, Jon Atle Gulla, Naomi Lintvedt, Daniel Kohn, Cathrine Pihl Lyngstad, Tanja Storsul and project manager  Jonas E. Wettre.  (Einar Duenger Bøhn was not present). 

The aim of this project is to map this paradigm shift for artificial intelligence, assess which questions will be particularly important for Norwegian government to consider, and to make recommendations.

Some of the topics the project will address:

• The need for large language models developed in Norway based on Norwegian data
• How the technology will affect schools and education
• Which jobs will be affected, and how
• The use of large language models in public administration
• Implications for creative professions, copyright, and patents
• Measures for dealing with the increasing amount of machine-generated content online

General chair, professor Helge Langseth, will welcome 160 students from 51countries when the fourth summer school is due at NTNU in June, a quarter of all the people applying for a seat. Key note speakers from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland and England will give lectures. The event is sponsored by DeepMind, DNV and NorwAI. 

Claes Lyth Walsø, Director Knowledge at The Police IT Unit, is next in line as a confirmed key note speaker at NorwAI Innovate to talk on AI tools being introduced to Norwegian Police. 

IDI, the Departement of Data Science at NTNU, and NorwAI is by far the biggest "producer" of AI Master students in the country. NorwAI alone is aiming at educating 500 master students in the research cenet's lifetime till 2028. 

Some of this year’s AI master's students presented their thesis projects in a special seminar on May 10th. This was a unique opportunity to hear about and to discuss the projects that have caught the students' interest and hard work. 

Among the presentations, Andreas Bjelland Berg and Victoria Heggland Haidu (picture) pitched their "Business models for small producers of large language models: The case of NorGLM".  

Discussions are raging on the need to regulate the new groundbraking AI technologies. Two of NorwAI's work package leaders are answering our six key questions on the topic.

Kriztian Balog, University of Stavanger 

Andreas Hafver, DNV

Researcher Inga Strümke at NTNU met the zeitgeist with her book on AI history, AI to-day and AI to-morrow. The book, Maskiner som tenker, has been sold out, but a new edition has now reached the bookstore shelves.  

NorwAI Innovate '23

Mark your calender for October 31st and November 1st - the next NorwAI AI conference in Trondheim will take place from lunch-to-lunch. Top keynote speakers, engaged audience to meet and relate. Registration will be announced soon at www.norwaiinnovate.no