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.

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

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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