GU-Journal 2-2023

GUJOURNAL

News Stopped course on Russia

Report Language models without knowledge

People Physicists on the future of science

Memorials for a new era

Heiner

brings craft into the future

Zimmermann

News 04–09

04 Stop for course on Russian history.

06 GU wants more cooperation with the US.

08 Easier to get permit for international students.

Profile 10–13

10 Heiner Zimmermann is forging the future.

Report 14–17

14 Social norms – often a help but sometimes harmful.

16 Striving to make a more humane language model.

People 18–22

18 The Moment

19 Physicists ponder over progress.

22 Message from Lisa Churkina.

Profile Heiner Zimmermann

Blacksmith in Dals Långed.

The future of science.

Changing social norms.

The Moment.

Vice-Chancellor

Developing the university’s study places

pring has made its entrance, which is a period characterised by intense work for most of us. The Walpurgis Night celebrations with the students at Trädgårdsföreningen is fast approaching. Since I have consistently tried to ensure that the students should have a good study environment, it is with pleasure that I can announce that we will move forward with the development of the university’s different types of study places. Following some extensive stock-taking and a situation assessment, the committee has presented clear recommendations that I have passed on.

The faculties and the University Library will be tasked with analysing the actual usage of the study places and present a plan for how we can optimise the existing premises. The faculties will also draft plans for how many new study places that can be created on the premises and for how existing places for studying can be upgraded. Property and Sustainable Development will coordinate and work in close collaboration with the students to draft university-wide guidelines.

The operational meetings during the

spring, where the university management met with the management teams from the faculties, the University Library and the Central University Administration to discuss last year’s outcome, have developed well. Every unit has provided solid annual follow-up reports for 2022 which form excellent bases for dynamic discussions. One challenge highlighted by many is the application of the tool measuring CO2 emissions. Some felt it was a bit of a blunt instrument and that it does not always capture all the good things that are being done. This tells us that we will need to see if we can tweak some things in the application of the tool. But measuring our CO2 emissions has still contributed to a discussion about how we can try to reduce our carbon footprint.

Before our upcoming meeting with the Department of Education, the government wants a clear account of how we work with information security. This has been a priority matter internally for the past few years. It is with some pride that I am able to conclude that our work on the management of research data has come so far that it is attracting interest from other higher-education institutions.

The university’s results from the latest Health and Safety Survey will be made available. I would like to stress the importance of continuing our work with these results at all levels. This is how we develop our shared workplace.

Masthead

A hallucinated artificial world

I-hallucinations is a new concept that we will probably hear more about. An example that Simon Dobnik, professor of computer linguistics, brings up is when you do not even have time to write “What colour does ...?” before getting the answer “red”. In that case, it is because most of the examples on which the language model was trained are about red things. Because the model did not use real images to examine reality, the model is said to be hallucinating. The hallucinations can also be about prejudices, for example doctors who are referred to as “he” and patients as “she”. For a language model to work and be useful, statistical relationships between words are not enough. Humanistic and social science knowledge about humans and the world is also needed, say the linguists GU Journal has spoken to.

Has science reached a limit where it is impossible to know more? Hardly, the world and we humans are too complex for everything worth knowing to ever come to an end. But there are those who believe that today’s way of funding and organizing research favours those who do as everybody else and disadvantages those who try to go their own way. Maybe we can learn from other countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands?

Vice-Chancellor EVA WIBERG

GUJOURNAL The GU Journal has a free and independent position, and is made according to journalistic principles.

Editor-in-chief:

Allan Eriksson, Phone: 031–786 10 21,

e-mail: allan.eriksson@gu.se

Editor: Eva Lundgren

Phone: 031–786 10 81, e-mail: eva.lundgren@gu.se

Photographer:

Johan Wingborg, Phone: 070–595 38 01,

e-mail:

johan.wingborg@gu.se

Layout: Anders Eurén, Phone: 031–786 43 81, e-mail: anders.euren@gu.se

Address: GU Journal, University of Gothenburg, Box 100, 405 30 Gothenburg , Sweden.

E-mail: gu-journalen@gu.se

Internet: gu-journalen.gu.se

ISSN: 1402-9626

Social norms help us in everyday life. But norms can also be destructive. Even if people realize that a certain behaviour is harmful, it can be difficult to do anything about. But bad social norms can be changed, says Lina Eriksson, who has quite a few examples.

Allan Eriksson and Eva Lundgren

Temporarily paused Russian course

It is extremely topical and student interest is greater than ever. Then the University of Gothenburg cancels the Russia course.

PER MÅNSON HAS directed the course Russia Between the Past and the Future for 20 years.

– It’s had its ups and downs. In the middle of the 2000s we had very few applications, but we kept going, and since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, interest has grown. The course has always been part-time, in the afternoons, with very eclectic groups, some students taking extra credits, a few pensioners and some people who come straight from work. It has been a very pleasant course to hold, he says.

But the years go by and Per Månson has now been Professor Emeritus of Sociology for some time. For this reason he has held the course, which is now in English and online, at the Centre for European Studies on six-month temping contracts that really do not offer enough hours for the work involved. This became particularly evident last spring when the course, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, had close to 250 applicants. But that was something Per Månson could take – the course is his baby and Russia his great passion.

– IT WAS A VERY successful course. Thirty-three students started, thirty-one completed it, and the course evaluation showed that it was hugely appreciated.

But there will be no course this autumn. According to the

Programme Board of the European Studies Programme, this is due to two reasons: “Firstly, the course needs to be reworked in terms of both form and content, for which there is unfortunately no time before the start of the autumn term 2023. Secondly, the current course director will no longer be able to be the course director in the 2023 autumn term.”

Per Månson find this very peculiar, but even more difficult to understand is why the

course could not still be held this autumn.

– THE CRUCIAL THING is that the course, which is more important than ever in light of the current international situation, continues. If necessary, I could almost work for free.

But in reality there was already a plan for how he was to retire. For six years, Senior Lecturer Jens Stillhoff Sörensen has taught the course and

In the Russia course, you can read more about the so-called Church of the Resurrection in Moscow, which is built as a memory of the assassination of Alexander II in 1881.

Illustration: Marika Lang

has been given more and more responsibility has time has gone by. The idea was that he was to take full responsibility for it next year, but in January he was asked by the Centre for European Studies to take over this autumn instead, something with which he was not entirely comfortable.

– I COULDN’T JUST take over. It would feel disloyal, and I said that I wanted to wait until they discussed with Per whether he would get an assignment or not. I thought I had left it open, but then I suddenly received an email about the course having been cancelled. I was very surprised and astonished, says Jens Stillhoff Sörensen.

Linda Berg, Director at the Centre for European Studies, does not agree with that.

– We asked directly whether Jens was ready to take over responsibility for the course or not, and he responded by referring to Per and that he hoped it would be resolved. We also held a meeting with Per and the management of his department, where Per said that Jens could not possibly take over responsibility for the course on such short notice. We needed to have a course director in place well in advance who was willing and had the time to work on developing the course.

ACCORDING TO Linda Berg, it was pointed out as early as in the spring of 2021 that the course and the reading list needed revising – something that had

not been done for the autumn of 2022. The course was also far too ambitious in its structure for the increased interest that had arisen among students.

– It became extremely difficult for anyone correcting and commenting on exams, says Linda Berg.

Per Månson agrees that the exam part is too advanced, but that it could easily be simplified.

– The idea was also that the course would change for 2024 when Jens Stillhoff Sörensen was supposed to take over, says Per Månson who wonders if there is something else behind the decision.

COULD CRITICISM of the course have played a role? Even though the course was very much appreciated, which nobody could doubt if they read the feedback submitted by around 30 students in conjunction with the final exam, there were two critical voices among them. One in particular accused Jens Stillhoff Sörensen of having used “pro-Russian rhetoric” once in a discussion on the war in Ukraine, and then, among other things, called western media “propaganda”.

– In the beginning of the course in September, Jens said that there is a geopolitical restructuring happening in the world. This offended one of the students who thought it was pure Putin propaganda. Last week, precisely the same discussion was held on the evening news programme, Aktuellt.

Jens was just talking about it too early, says Per Månson who discussed the criticism with the two students.

– Of course the students should be critical of what lecturers say, but it is not enough to, as in this case, only have BBC News as the source for one’s opinions. This is a university course where we discuss issues impartially and work with sources and how to evaluate them, the students need to realise this.

BUT THE CRITICISM was passed on through the official and anonymized course evaluation (with a total of seven respondents) that reached all the way to the Programme Board.

– We highlighted the fact that there had been criticism, but that has definitely not influenced the decision to suspend/// the course, says Linda Berg.

Then what did you discuss concerning the criticism?

– We talked about how it was a little worrying and that we had to talk to the lecturer in question to find out their version of the events.

Have you talked to him?

– No I haven’t had time, but I will do so, says Linda Berg.

She completely understands that it may look strange that the course has been suspended now when the interest is greater than ever but at the same time, that is one of the reasons why the course has to be restructured. She promises that the course will be back, hopefully as early as in the spring of 2024.

– FOR OUR programme students spring is better than autumn, because in the spring they can choose an optional course. That would enable more programme students to take the course.

It has not yet been decided who will be taking over the course, according to Linda Berg. But it will not be Per Månson or Jens Stillhoff Sörensen.

Lasse Nicklason

»I thought I had left it open, but then I suddenly received an email about the course having been cancelled.«

Jens Stillhoff Sörensen

Per Månson has run the course for 20 years.

Photo: Johan Wingborg

GU goes West

Early in March, a delegation from the University of Gothenburg visited five higher-education institutions in California. The visit was part of an initiative aimed at expanding the partnerships in North America.

it involved the Sireus project.

THE THREE-YEAR Sireus project started on February 1, 2022, with the aim of increasing collaboration between 12 Swedish higher-education institutions and American academia and businesses, says Deputy Vice-Chancellor Torbjörn Lundh.

– In Washington D.C. we had our first in-person meeting at management level. We were in contact with several American universities with whom we will discuss future cooperation and exchange programmes. And two delegations from the USA will soon visit Gothenburg. Representatives of the University of Texas San Antonio will

be arriving on May 24, and colleagues from Washington State University will visit us on June 2.

Sweden and the USA have long had active collaborations, within academia as well as in business, Torbjörn Lundh points out.

– THE CULTURAL exchange between the countries is strong, and many Americans work for Swedish companies. American universities are world leaders within a number of fields, but Sweden also has a lot to offer. The Americans are often interested in Swedish politics, technology and environmental initiatives.

Photo: Private

Among other things,

Meeting with Sireus-management in Washington D.C.

Students find other things appealing as well, not least in Gothenburg, and I am not just thinking of Death Metal.

THE SIREUS PROJECT involves creating a platform for talent mobility that will facilitate collaboration between researchers, students and businesses, says Hans Abelius, Unit Manager at the International Centre.

– The academic partnerships with American higher-education institutions are very important. But the collaboration with American industry is also significant, for example in finding internships for our students.

One side-effect of the Sireus partnership is that representatives from twelve Swedish universities have had the opportunity to meet, Torbjörn Lundh points out.

– It’s not very often that so many Swedish colleagues are able to gather at the same time in the same place. But of course it is a little paradoxical to go to the USA in order to meet colleagues from Uppsala or the Royal Institute of Technology.

SINCE LAST AUTUMN , there are new rules governing residence permits in Sweden. People from visa-free countries must present their passport in person at a Swedish embassy in order to

obtain a permit for studying or working here. These new rules entail practical problems for both researchers and students, says Hans Abelius.

– But it would appear that the government has realised this and instructed the Migration Agency to facilitate passport controls. So hopefully, this will not lead to a decrease in American interest in Sweden.

Eva Lundgren

→ About Sireus:

SIREUS is a three-year partnership project between the Swedish Chambers of Commerce in the USA (SACC) and twelve Swedish highereducation institutions. The project aims to promote knowledge exchange within science, innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as to improve mobility for students, interns and researchers between Sweden and the USA.

The quality of higher education and research will be strengthened through:

Increasing the number of students, interns and researchers who participate in exchange programmes between Sweden and the USA

Increasing the knowledge exchange through new and stronger partnership projects within research and innovation

Strengthening Sweden’s appeal as a destination for studies, research and internship.

The following higher-education institutions are part of the project: Chalmers, Jönköping University, Karolinska Institutet, the Royal Institute of Technology, the Linnnaeus University, Luleå University of Technology, Mid Sweden University, as well as the universities in Gothenburg, Linköping, Lund, Mälardalen and Uppsala.

»The cultural exchange between the countries is strong…«

Torbjörn

Lundh

– Representatives of two American universities will visit Gothenburg in May and June, says Torbjörn Lundh.

Photo: Johan Wingborg

New ways to facilitate passport control

Since November last year, international students must personally go to a Swedish embassy to obtain a Swedish residence permit.

After protests from several universities, the government has now tasked the Swedish Migration Agency with coming up with solutions that facilitate passport control in countries with many students applying to Sweden.

IT WAS ON November 1 last year that the Swedish Migration Agency introduced stricter passport controls when applying for residence permits.

– The new rules mean that anyone applying for a residence permit for study purposes

must personally present their passport at a Swedish embassy before the Swedish Migration Agency will make a decision. The aim is to improve the due process and reduce the risk of irregularities, says Karin Andrén at the Swedish Migration Agency’s press office.

– WE ARE TRYING to make it as convenient as possible by ensuring that you only need to visit the Swedish Migration Agency or the embassy/consulate once. The visit can then be combined with submitting fingerprints and taking a photo for your residence-permit ID.

The new passport requirements apply to everyone outside of the Schengen Area, so includes people who require no visa to be in Sweden.

For researchers and stu-

dents in the USA, the requirements mean that they have to travel to the Swedish embassy in Washington D.C. as that is the only Swedish mission that can conduct a biometric examination. This is according to John Molander, Project Manager at the International Centre.

– Previously, you could fax in a passport copy, something that is of course easy to manipulate, which led to criticism from the Swedish National Audit Office, so I do understand the need to make the application process more secure. But before introducing a change, you should ensure that it is possible to implement it without any major glitches. For example, in a country as large as the USA Swedish missions should have biometric devices in more

than one place. For someone living in California for example, it may be so expensive and time-consuming to travel to Washington D.C. that they decide to study somewhere else instead.

FOLLOWING CRITICISM from several universities, the government instructed the Swedish Migration Agency in February to make it easier for people who do not require a visa to present their passport, Karin Andrén explains.

– This could, for example, involve sending out mobile passport checks to places with many applicants to Swedish universities.

Eva Lundgren

Impossible to control misuse of study permits

Last autumn, the Swedish Migration Agency published a report showing extensive misuse of residence permits for studies. The survey focuses on people from Pakistan. However, it is not possible to say how many Pakistani students apply for courses at GU, and how many of these are rejected.

SINCE STUDENTS do not specify citizenship when applying to GU, there are no exact figures on the number of applicants from different countries, says John Molander at the International Centre.

– On the other hand, the applicant states an address country, i.e. from which country the application was made, which of course does not have to be the same as where one is a citizen. It is also possible to see the country of prior education. If the pre-education country is China, it is quite certain that the student is a citizen of China. But among those who have the US as their primary education country, only about 70 percent are probably American.

IN ORDER TO determine whether a student really intends to study, the Swedish Migration Agency in some cases conducts a so-called study intention investigation, with interviews before deciding on a residence permit.

– This leads to a lot of problems for the prospective

students. They must have paid the term fee before they can apply for a residence permit, which can then take time. Sometimes they may not get an interview until October, and by then half the semester has passed. So we have a group of students who are rejected by the Migration Agency because the Migration Agency makes the assessment that they do not actually intend to study, and another group who withdraw their application because it took so long to receive notification of a residence permit. We cannot know which students belong to which group.

IF THE STUDENT withdraws their application, the semester fee must be paid back, which means a lot of work, says John Molander.

– Many students from, for example, Pakistan have previously paid their fees via exchange offices, as there is a lack of functioning banking systems in some countries, which makes repayments extra complicated. This has meant that we now require card payment from international students from Pakistan, Iran, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.

Eva Lundgren

For more information: https://medarbetarportalen. gu.se/aktuellt/nyheter-detalj// ny-rapport--halften-av-studenterna-pa-engelsksprakiga-program-vid-gu-har-utlandsk-forutbildning.cid1762654?languageId=100001&skipSSOCheck=true.

John Molander at the International Centre, GU

Photo: Private

With hammer and anvil into the future

For the past ten years, the Håjum burial site in Trollhättan has been home to a collection of memorials created by metal arts students at HDK-Valand Steneby. Each year, new memorials are added.

– When students work with public commissions they also start to think about where they would look most suitable and what they want to achieve with their art. Finding answers to these questions is one of the most important objectives of their education, explains Heiner Zimmermann, Professor of Arts and Crafts. 

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

e grew up in Pliezhausen south of Stuttgart as a third-generation blacksmith. His father, Paul Zimmermann, is considered to be one of the true innovators of metal art in Germany, but also his brother is in the same line of work.

As a blacksmith, you are standing on the shoulders of generations of predecessors, Heiner Zimmermann explains.

– The blacksmith is the father of craft. Almost every single tool in agrarian societies was created by the blacksmith, from knives, hammers and tongs, to pitchforks, spades and cooking pots. The blacksmith was considered to possess magical powers. That is because when you have no clock, one way of measuring time was to recite a chant that took a certain number of seconds. A medieval blacksmith standing in his smithy muttering, enveloped by fire and smoke, waiting for the iron to become red hot must have sparked the imagination of many of the people of old.

With so many blacksmiths in the family, it would perhaps have been obvious for Heiner Zimmermann to pass on the tradition. But as he had a passion for politics and society he made an attempt to take a different route.

– As an 18-year-old I walked into the police station in Pliezhausen to apply for police training. But the officer there just shook his head: “Go back home to your father, you’re going to be a blacksmith”.

So for three years, Heiner Zimmermann studied under his father. He concluded his studies by winning the prestigious German design award, Gute Form. After that, he spent four years as an apprentice. He spent time in Montana, USA, where he lived on a Native American reservation, in England, where he worked with public art, in Norway, where he learned to love nature, and in Switzerland, where his mother is from. After his apprenticeship, he attended a one-year training course in metal restoration in Venice.

– As an apprentice, I was given food and lodging, but no wages. That may seem a little unfair, but the advantage is that the person you work under feels obliged to give all the more of his expertise, so my apprentice years were incredibly rewarding.

After his master’s degree in 1998, Heiner Zimmermann took over his father’s smithy. He also started to hold courses in blacksmithing – but also short courses in team building for groups in a variety of different professions.

– The courses start with a meeting where the participants talk about what they do and what their goals are. Then they get to design a symbol for how they will achieve these goals. And finally, they make their symbol in the smithy. To work with your hands, to realise a joint vision is a very powerful way of bonding.

He was at a conference in Finland in 2009 when his mobile phone suddenly rang.

– It was someone in Sweden who asked me if I wanted to be a teacher in metal art at the University of Gothenburg. I was loading my car with exhibition objects and replied without thinking that I would definitely consider doing that. It was only some time later that I started thinking about what I had consented to.

HDK-Valand Steneby is located in Dals Långed, around 170 kilometres north of Göteborg, with a view of the enchanting lake, Laxsjön. Besides metal art, you can also study textile and furniture design in beautiful scenic surroundings.

– Teaching is conducted in English and the students are form all corners of the world. It is the very fact that it is located far from the city, way out in the Swedish countryside, that attracts many people. Out here, you are free to focus on your work, simply because there is not much else to distract you.

The workshop for metalwork is the largest in the world for academic education in artistic metalwork.

– In other countries academic smithing programmes are mainly theoretical, to actually make objects is seen as less important. In Sweden, they have realised that your mind and your hands are connected; I may have come up with a beautiful design in my head, but when I am standing by the hammer and anvil I have to let the idea evolve, because things will always happen that I did not initially anticipate.

In the spring of 2022, Heiner Zimmermann became Professor of Arts and Crafts, specialising in metal art.

– The team I work with means everything to me. Together we strive towards three goals: the first concerns internationalisation. The number of metalwork artists in the world is fairly small, so we should collaborate rather than compete. Over the years, I have made many contacts in different countries that I would be happy to pass on.

The other main task is equality.

– Blacksmithing may seem very masculine, as it is heavy, dirty and noisy. But the fact is that in the old days, it was not at all unusual to have a woman blacksmith; as the men were frequently away at war, it was natural for the wife to take over the business. In order to encourage female students at the academy we teachers are careful to make sure that there is an even gender distribution of invited guest lecturers, who all act as role models.

The third task is about sustainability, Heiner Zimmermann tells us.

– The traditional coal-fired forge is problematic from an environmental perspective. But otherwise, handcrafted goods are among the most eco-friendly products there are. They are so sustainable that they can be handed down the generations, and if they break

they can be repaired or at least reused. And more and more people are being inspired by the care shown by the people of old for the objects that they produced. But sustainability is also about more than the environment.

– The students are not only here to learn a craft, but also to reflect on what they want to achieve with their profession and their role in society. Reflecting on such things is one of the ideas behind the course on memorials.

Heiner Zimmermann, together with his father, has devoted many years to memorials.

– There used to be rituals for how to say farewell and show compassion when someone died. Among all the current philosophies and lifestyles there is no common way of getting comfort and help when you are grieving. Talking about death has almost become taboo.

New eras require new rituals, Heiner Zimmermann argues.

– When I am going to create a memorial of a deceased, I start by talking to the family. We talk about the deceased person’s life and personality, and together we arrive at a visual symbol that suits the person. It may be a cross, but it might also be something completely different. One example is a woman who suddenly passed away before her husband and son had time to say goodbye. They told me that she had been a withdrawn and somewhat taciturn woman. To honour her, I made a memorial in the form of a small box that could be opened. When you opened it, you can read her name on the inside, and family members can leave messages there. By so doing, they can tell her about the things that they did not have time to say before she passed away.

A while back, when Heiner Zimmermann attended a conference in the USA, one speaker talked about different health risks that smiths are subjected to, everything from smoke inhalation from the coal fire to wrist problems from all the hammering.

– And still smiths have long lives, my own father, for example, is 83 years old. I think it is because we have such a creative profession. As long as I am able to create, I will stay happy!

Heiner Zimmermann

Current: New Professor of Arts and Crafts specialising in Metal Art.

Place of work: His smithy outside Stuttgart and at HDK-Valand Steneby.

Family: Partner.

Heiner Zimmermann together with a master student at Steneby.

Watch the film about Heiner Zimmermann ↓

How to change a social norm

Duel at dawn in 19th century Georgia. Two seconds have tried in vain to mediate, but neither of the parties is willing to concede.

The pistols are loaded, the distance measured.

– Most social norms facilitate interaction between people. But certain unwritten rules, often based on honour, can instead engender terrible deeds. In order to handle such situations you need to have levers to pull, to enable change, Lina Eriksson explains.

There is no procedure, court or document that determine which norms will prevail in a society. And yet, most people abide by those unspoken rules that you learn in childhood, says Lina Eriksson, Professor of Political Science who is conducting research on social norms.

– The term “social norm” has two meanings that partly overlap. To some extent it involves what people in general perceive as normal behaviour, such as bringing an umbrella when it is raining.

But “social norms” can also involve morality. Then it is not about what people in general do, but about what they should do, regardless of whether it falls under normal behaviour or not. Some examples include paying taxes and not littering.

– We keep each other in check using different sanctions. For example, gossip is about subjecting a person who misbehaves to disdain, something that may have severe consequences, such as being ostracised from one's friends.

One way of displaying your attitude to

social norms is through the way you dress. For example, you go to your office job properly attired – unless you are the top executive of an international technology company and can afford to show that you do not care, says Lina Eriksson.

– Some norms around clothes are more significant than others. If I turn up at work in a red cocktail dress, my colleagues may raise an eyebrow. But if I do so at a funeral, the mourners will probably take offence, maybe even feel that I am mocking them, since black, or at least discreet clothing, is a powerful norm on such occasion.

Norms help us in our day-to-day lives and make interaction with our fellow man go more smoothly.

But norms can also be destructive, Lina Eriksson explains.

– Even if people realise that a certain behaviour is harmful, it can be incredibly difficult to change. Someone has to take the first step and that person also, to a great extent, risks being sanctioned in various ways. But once change has begun it can happen very rapidly. For example in Sweden, the view of marriage, sexual orientation and child rearing has changed radically in a couple of generations.

What Lina Eriksson investigates is how these changes happen and how you can support a trend towards better social norms. It is about having a number of “levers” to pull, she explains.

– One such “lever” is to examine if what people perceive as a norm truly is one. For example, among college students in the US there is a perception that most of their peers are partying and getting drunk at the weekend. However, when one college conducted a survey it turned out not to be true at all; the majority of students did

their coursework or something completely different when they had time off. This insight resulted in less pressure to attend parties – but could sometimes also lead to those who were drinking starting to party even more.

Encouraging those who do something good often works, but pointing fingers at those who do something bad often has a negative impact, Lina Eriksson explains.

– One example is electricity providers that by using a smiley managed to encourage customers who consume less electricity than their neighbours. However, showing a frowning emoji to those who use more electricity than others only leads to irritation. This is because a frowning emoji breaches another norm: that you have the right to determine your own actions.

Another lever may be to reduce the incentive for bad behaviour.

– In an American school where it was considered tough to carry a weapon, they introduced a reporting system where those who reported armed pupils received a reward. This led to there not being very many people, other than their closest friends, to whom the tough guys could show their weapons, and the reason for carrying them disappeared.

A very unpleasant social norm is female genital mutilation, which is practised in Sudan, for example.

– One way of changing perceptions of a phenomenon is to introduce new words. In Sudan, there is a movement that uses the term “saleema” for uncircumcised women, which translates as “whole, as God created her”. This way, they hope to create a positive attitude to refraining from the intervention.

There is a sort of code of honour in criminal gangs, where injustices lead to bloody reprisals, says Lina Eriksson.

– It often leads to a cycle of violence that is difficult to break out of, and where even people who have nothing to do with the conflict risk becoming involved. One way of diminishing the power of gangs is to make it easier for young people to be part of several groups. Anyone with a job or in education and who perhaps also plays football or does something else in their spare time, is better equipped to

resist peer pressure than someone whose only social affiliation is the gang.

The duels of old between aristocrats were also about never tolerating an insult. The people of the time were fully aware that this tradition was neither a good one nor solved any problems, and duels were banned in many places. But still they continued, says Lina Eriksson.

– A couple of examples of how they managed to stop duelling in the 19th century come from the American south. They decided that anyone who participated in

a duel would be excluded from political positions, and also that the widow of an officer killed in a duel would not receive a pension. The regulations meant that the norm of duelling was in conflict with the norm of being involved in politics, something that was expected from an aristocrat, and it was also in conflict with the norm of being a responsible husband and father. Both regulations made it possible to decline a duel without being perceived as a coward and thus losing face.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

Lina Eriksson points out that social norms often help us in everyday life, but that they sometimes may be harmful.

Language models with a human touch

The new impressive GPT models produce texts which appear to be written by a person. But can the models really create human language?

This is something researchers at the Faculty of Humanities are investigating.

Generative Pre-trained Transformers, GPT:s, are advanced language models available in several versions. The most recent ones, GPT3 and GPT4, are created by the company Open AI and have been trained on tens of billions of text samples. In Sweden as well, similar models are developed, such as GPT SW3, created by AI Sweden, and Bert, produced by the National Library.

Although the texts that the language models produce seem surprisingly natural, they don’t function at all like human language, explains Simon Dobnik, Professor of Computational Linguistics.

– Unlike humans, the models don’t have access to the surrounding world, but instead work by finding statistical relationships in huge collections of text. The quality of an answer depends on the probability that the word sequences

appear in the text form that the models have learned, i.e. not on how likely it is that something is true in reality.

The language models approximate meaning according to the distributional hypothesis, explains Nina Tahmasebi, associate professor in language technology.

– The hypothesis means that a word like “chair” often appears in the same context as a word with a similar meaning, like “table”. The meaning is determined indirectly: If “table” and “chair” appear at the same time in a text describing the world, then there is a real relationship between the words. However, the GPT models cannot figure out that a banana is yellow. This is because the models know nothing about reality outside their text world.

Recently, 1,880 researchers signed a letter in which they point out the risks of letting the language models take over various human activities. But there are many other problems, points out Asad Sayeed,

senior lecturer in computational linguistics.

– I recently asked the GPT3 model to write something about the female presidents of France. In response, I received a text with a number of names that looked credible. When I instead asked about female presidents in North Korea, I got the correct answer, that there have never been any. That the answer was correct this time is due to the fact that there is not much information about North Korea on the internet and thus, paradoxically, nothing to build an incorrect conclusion on either.

The massive language models that multinational companies such as Microsoft, Google and Open AI develop cost an enormous amount, both in money and energy, explains Felix Morger, PhD student in language technology.

– The language models use cloud services from servers in data centers all over the world where the information is constantly being processed. The costs are so high that only the largest international companies can make such investments –not even a country as large as the United States keeps up when the global giants compete to be first and best at launching

new products. There are calculations that show that the training of GPT3 consumed as much energy as 120 American homes do annually.

However, exactly how much the systems cost and what environmental impact they have is a secret, explains Simon Dobnik.

– There is also no precise information about what material the models are based on or how much human monitoring there is, for example of material with unwanted social bias. When this kind of information is not shared with the research community, we also cannot find out if there are ways to build models that are just as good, using smaller volumes of data, less human interaction, and a lower environmental footprint.

The models also do not give a very good representation of humanity.

– An overwhelming majority of the texts the models train on come from the English-speaking Western middle class, while subcultures or other cultures and languages are poorly represented. Inequality is further exacerbated by the fact that it is people in the rich world who can afford to use new technology and not particularly citizens of developing countries. To handle issues such as how the models work, what bias they contain and what they can be used for, language technology and humanistic knowledge is necessary, says Nina Tahmasebi

– Language is not about statistical relationships between different words,

but about how we humans communicate and relate to the outside world. Therefore, knowledge about humans and our world cannot be omitted from a language model.

The research conducted at GU is about building smaller language models and investigating what they can learn about language and human communication. With the help of knowledge in linguistics, psychology and various social sciences, the models can be improved and various biases can be discovered and counteracted. And because the models that linguists use are based on deep analyses of how language works, the huge material the global companies use is not needed, Nina Tahmasebi points out.

– They are thus possible to use both for researchers and companies. We build models that interpret what is reasonable by thinking of text as language and not just data. In this way, we can make models that are cheaper, more environmentally friendly and also more reliable.

One of the ongoing projects at the Faculty of Humanities is SuperLim 2.0, which is mostly finished, says Felix Morger.

– It is about producing a collection of material in Swedish that can test models for language understanding. The test quantities are already available and the website to upload and compare results will also be online soon.

Another project, Granny Karl is 27 years old, is about pseudonymisation of research data, says Simon Dobnik.

– The idea is to create language technology algorithms that detect personal data and sensitive information in large masses of text and replace the words with suitable pseudonyms, without changing the meaning of the text or introducing more bias.

Another project is about reinforcement learning, where machine learning takes place through interaction with the environment, says Asad Sayeed.

– For example, we are looking at how artificial agents learn to name different colours in a guessing game, consisting of one narrator and one listener, where both agents are rewarded when they reach an agreement.

The humanistic perspective is fundamental to creating language models that are truly reliable and useful, Nina Tahmasebi states.

– We can use existing texts smarter and more equally, prevent the spread of false information and various types of prejudice, and start from what people need rather than from what can be done technically. We are not looking to put an end to commercial products, but we believe that it is important to examine both what they can actually do and what they are suitable for. Beyond being used as a fun gimmick, these methods can provide answers to deep, complex research questions that contribute to society.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

About the people involved:

Nina Tahmasebi is Associate Professor of Language Technology, and Programme Manager for Change is Key! The study of contemporary and historical societies using methods for synchronic semantic change, which was granted SEK 33.5 million by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Simon Dobnik is Professor of Computational Linguistics at the Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability (CLASP) and a participant in the project Mormor Karl är 27 år: Automatisk pseudonymisering av forskningsdata. (Granny Karl is 27 years old: Automatic pseudonymisation of research data).

Felix Morger is a doctoral student at Språkbanken Text and involved in the project SuperLim 2.0

Asad Sayeed is Senior Lecturer in Computational Linguistics at CLASP and researches language and mental images.

»We build models that interpret what is reasonable by thinking of texts as language and not just data.«

NINA TAHMASEBI

– The language models GPT3 and GPT4 have no knowledge of the world, says Simon Dobnik.

Where? Who? When?

• The Conference Centre at Lindholmen.

• Benedikt Schuegraf, Jouman Tafnkji and Elena Vocale, students of the International Youth Think Tank.

• Tuesday, the 28th of February 2023.

Short description

The International Youth Think Tank (IYTT) is a think tank for students aged 18–24 who want to influence the world in a democratic direction. Among other things, IYTT organizes so-called Gothenburg Democracy Talks, where young people put forward concrete proposals for a democratic development.

They also go out into the streets and ask passers-by what they think about democracy. From the voices collected by the students, Jacob Hirdwall has made the play Conversations with Strangers, which was previously read at the Athens Democracy Forum. On February 28, it was performed at the Gothenburg City’s Democracy Day.

What three words come to mind when you hear the word democracy? Do you have the power to decide your own life? What expectations do you have for the future? are some of the questions asked by the students.

The initiator of IYTT is Urban Strandberg, senior lecturer at the Department of Law.

Do Swedish higher-education institutions have a funding and career system that is in direct opposition to good research?

Perhaps it is not all that bad – but if Sweden is to keep up with comparable countries in research and development, a radical change is required.

This is the position of three professors at the department of physics – Mattias Goksör, Mattias Marklund and Giovanni Volpe.

Complicated system discourages research 

ne of the major problems for Swedish research is the lack of direct government funding, Mattias Goksör points out.

– Researchers spend a lot of time filling out application forms to get funding for a project that, in a best case scenario, will run over a period of five years. If, after all this work, you get a grant, which is not guaranteed, co-funding from the department is often required. So, external funding can lead to the department’s room for manoeuvre, in terms of resources and recruitment, being constrained, which naturally is not the purpose of external funding. But paradoxically, a grant may become so expensive that a department is forced to decline.

As the direct government funding does not cover very much research, it has become more important over the past few decades to find ways of allocating the funding that the government does provide. Performance has become more important and that means things that can be measured, such as the amount of external funding, published articles and number of citations. This performance approach is repeated at every level: when the state provides funding to the universities, when the universities allocate the funds to the faculties, and when they in turn pass them on to the departments that give funds to individual researchers.

We have ended up with a system that not always leads to good research, Mattias Goksör points out.

– The depleted direct government funding means that not everybody is guaranteed research time, but must instead apply for funding for both his own and his employees’ wages. Researchers are forced to go where the money is and go for quick results rather than more longterm studies.

ince it is the number of publications that counts, rather than the quality of those publications, you have to break down the conclusions to the smallest possible unit. So even if there are still many interesting articles being written, the proportion that contain something truly new is smaller than it was 20 years ago, Giovanni Volpe points out.

– The system favours less respectable stakeholders, such as “predatory journals” that, often for a hefty sum, quickly

publish articles that have not been through serious scientific review.

There are countries though, that have considerably more understanding of the fact that research requires time, Giovanni Volpe argues.

– In countries like Germany and Switzerland, a professor not only has a guaranteed wage, which is significantly higher than in Sweden, but is also guaranteed wages for a certain number of employees. The professor does not have to teach or apply for external funding if they do not want to, so has the opportunity to spend time on projects that span several decades. One example is Svante Pääbo at The Max Planck Institute in Leipzig who has worked with evolutionary genetics throughout his research life. The work he got the Nobel Prize for would not have been possible without it an internal financing of approximately 2 million euro in the early 2000s that was used for the sequencing of Neanderthal genome. It was a very risky job which could never have been financed with

ordinary allowances.

Curiosity and freedom is the very foundation for successful research, Giovanni Volpe points out.

– One might object that professors who are allowed to do what they want may spend their time on very inward-looking projects. And that may happen occasionally. But just as in other professional fields, most professors want to contribute as best they can to society, of which they are part.

weden is the country in the European Union with the highest level of investment in research, approximately 3.4 percent of GDP. But that does not tell the full story, Mattias Marklund explains.

– The lion’s share, around 70 percent, comes from the business community. And the part funded by the state leads to a vicious circle. For example, Akademiska Hus, the company that dominates the lease of premises to universities and colleges, is required to generate an annual profit of around 6 billion. That would be acceptable if the money had gone back into academia, but that is not the case. As government agencies, the institutions of higher education also have plenty of reporting requirements regarding quality

»Companies such as Astra Zeneca invest heavily in basic research.«

MATTIAS MARKLUND

Mattias Marklund

and education, which take up both time and resources. We live in a society where it is important to check that money is spent wisely, but where it is not particularly important to find out how much is being spent on those checks.

The advantage of external funding, where each project undergoes thorough scientific review, should be that it leads to better quality research. But instead the reverse seems to be the case, Mattias Goksör explains.

– An inquiry from 2018 by Stephen Hwang, then vice-chancellor of Halmstad University, suggested that external funding might be an expensive method of allocating funds, and secondly that countries with higher direct government funding than Sweden, such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland, generally have better quality research.

Denmark has eight universities while Sweden has around fifty higher-education institutions. This is one reason why the resources per institution of higher education is diluted. Another reason is that Swedish universities have so many professors, argues Mattias Goksör.

– When I started my third-cycle studies, I was just one of my professor’s doctoral students. Now, for financial reasons, it can be the other way around with several professors sharing one doctoral student. This is completely back to front, partly because we need young researchers, partly of course because research constantly has to rejuvenated. Since the government budget is unlikely to increase, the country’s higher-education institutions will probably need to cut back on the number of employees, just like Chalmers did two years ago. Eventually, more higher-education institutions will introduce a cap on the number of staff, at least that is my guess.

urrently, a significant part of the curiosity-driven research in natural and technical sciences is conducted at companies, and not only at universities, argues Mattias Marklund.

– Companies such as Astra Zeneca invest heavily in basic research. Private foundations are important as well, such as the Danish fund, Novo Nordisk, which grants 9 billion Danish krona each year,

and whose funds also go to Swedish partnerships. This can be compared to the Wallenberg Foundations annual grants of around 2.2 billion Swedish krona. Among other things, Novo Nordisk is investing around 2 billion in building the world’s first quantum computer.

Infrastructure in particular is another field that requires enormous resources. Lund has Max IV, which is a national undertaking, as well as the European Spallation Source (ESS) which is a European consortium, Mattias Goksör tells us.

– The cost increases are enormous and the state will probably not add the corresponding funds in the research budget. Major projects are important, but

Parties to the conversation:

Mattias Goksör, Professor of Physics and former Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Gothenburg

Mattias Marklund, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Secretary General for the Scientific Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering Sciences at the Research Council

Giovanni Volpe, Professor of Physics, recently the recipient of an ERC grant for the project on Virtual tissue staining by deep learning (IFLAI). Recently a report was published by the OECD Public research funding in Sweden: optimising the system in response to multiple demands, which was commissioned by the government.

smaller projects must also be able to receive funding, Mattias Marklund argues.

– If the government provides funding to Formas, for example, to conduct climate research there must be someone who has already started down that path and could receive the money. Because starting an entirely new research area takes several years, and an important role for universities is to support basic research within smaller areas that may grow into something larger.

We have to start thinking about what kind of system we want, Giovanni Volpe points out.

– Not everybody can be a professor. But those who do must be given the opportunity to do as good a job as possible, otherwise the title will lose its value and become fairly meaningless.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

»The professor does not have to teach or apply for external funding if they do not want to …«

GIOVANNI VOLPE

»Researchers are forced to go where the money is and go for quick results rather than more long-term studies.«

MATTIAS GOKSÖR

Mattias Goksör

Giovanni Volpe

You think you know what your plans are ...

these dates remind me of:

The most valuable (non) things

Potential and true passions

Innocent feelings

Unlimited capacities

Endless aspirations

Ironclad commitment

Pure faith

Unity

Borderlessness

Liberation …

Last year became a year of re-discovering myself from the very beginning. Like learning to crawl, you make your first attempt at experiencing life – inside and out. Your try to puzzle it all together, but you don’t understand how such horrible hostility, exploded flats and bus stops, or queues for bread can co-exist with prosperous businesses reopened during the war, digital innovations, kindness, and those little smiles and small talks you never paid so much attention to and took for granted.

capacity to muster up liveliness and hope once more; paradoxically enough, as we have all had something snap inside. This is what has been keeping us alive. Life came to me through people. Through safety, connectivity and belonging. Through the people I love, and the ones who became an extended family to me.

The Russians thought they had stolen life from us. All they did was open our eyes to what’s really important in this life. Now, no matter what, we will never let it go.

Support Ukraine. Remember the price of freedom.

You think you know what your plans are. What you are confident in. What you have and how happy you are. All it takes is one year to completely lose and regain all your senses.

One year to go through all-pervading fear only to return with confidence and pride.

One year to define inner strength, no matter how much unfathomable destruction is around.

I got used to thinking of New Years’ Eves and Birthdays as new beginning or starting points. The re-traumatization on the 24th of February 2023 has brought up new points

We all lost our lives as they used to be. We lost track of time itself. Lost those carefully crafted masks we’d worn not to seem too emotional, too caring, too pure … We learned that our “past” can be packed in a few backpacks. We felt: how dare we postpone and delay and trivialize that which we deemed important? We cried, we hugged, we pushed for resistance. We discovered strength in the presence of our growing defiance and now we will never go back to the darkness of fear, silence, or passivity. Eventually, we grew the

Speech by Lisa Churkina on March 8 at the opening of the exhibition Messages from Ukraine in Vasaparken. The exhibition is based on a publication by the same name, created by Gregg Bucken-Knapp, Professor in Public Administration, the Estonian comic artist Joonas Sildre, and international students at the University of Gothenburg, among them Lisa Churkina.

The exhibition will be shown as follows:

Domkyrkoplan:

12 April to 10 May

Faculty of Humanities:

11 May to 1 June

Economics Library: September

Department of Applied Information Technology: October

Biomedical Library: November

Speech by Lisa Churkina, student at a course within the program Swedish Institute Academy for Young Professionals, arranged by GU.