Aike Rots

What if generative AI is not here to stay? - Generative AI has been compared to the Concorde. Supersonic commercial flight seemed there to stay, until it became clear it would’t work at scale: too costly, too risky, too environmentally harmful...

Great text! What if AI is not here to stay?"Generative AI has been compared to the Concorde. Supersonic commercial flight seemed there to stay, until it became clear it would’t work at scale: too costly, too risky, too environmentally harmful" : www.universitetsavisa.no/fremtidsscen...

🙏🏻 Friday 28.11, Kyushu University, Fukuoka. "Who Owns the Goddess? Pilgrimage-Tourism and Popular Devotion in Twenty-First-Century East Asia." Guest lecture (in English).

🪷 Friday 21.11, Tohoku University, Sendai. "Lady of the Whales: Comparing Maritime Kannon Worship in Vietnam and Japan." Presentation as part of the workshop "Kannon in Modern Ideology and Popular Practices", with Ayako Kimishima and Clinton Godart (bilingual).

🐋 Wednesday 19.11, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. 「現代社会における『鯨信仰』―ベトナムと日本の鯨祭祀をくらべて」. Guest lecture (in Japanese).

Very much looking forward to my upcoming trip to Japan! 🇯🇵

Four weeks in Tokyo, Sendai, Nagoya, Kansai, and Kyushu. A full schedule, with work meetings, excursions, and three academic events.

Please join if you are in town: ⬇️

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

In Kraków for the #IAHR2025 conference. Started today with a city walk, Catholic Mass, and Polish folk dance performance. Looking forward to the conference! I will be on two panels: "Recentring fear in the study of religion" (Tu, 9am) and "Religion and heritage-making in Japan and beyond" (Th, 1pm).

Ja, dette viser at vi er et land uten kontroll på oljesektoren.

Og det miljøbevegelsen så forsiktig ber om, er en PLAN for utfasingen av denne forurensende næringa, på en måte som også ivaretar arbeidere i sektoren. Men noen krever full gass mot stupet www.nrk.no/klima/norge-...

What is the relationship between whaling, heritage, tourism & community? Through ethnographic research, @aikerots.bsky.social examines festivals in 3 Japanese towns as case studies of whaling as a social imaginary and reveals how heritage-making is a future-oriented endeavor doi.org/10.1080/1869...

One week left to apply for this tenured #envhist job!

Just published: my article "Crossing Boundaries: Rethinking 'Japanese Religion' in the Anthropocene." A great honour to have been invited to contribute to the 50th anniversary issue of @jjrs-nirc.bsky.social. Many thanks @mcmullen.bsky.social, @jolyonbt.bsky.social, and @kaitlynugoretz.bsky.social.

Exploring human-cetacean relations in maritime East Asia A comparative ethnographic project dived into the links between religion, biodiversity and the environment.,,,European Commission

A short article on CORDIS, the research dissemination website of @erc.europa.eu, about our Horizon 2020 research project "Whales of Power" (2019-2025) 🇪🇺🐳🙏. In six languages 🇬🇧🇫🇷🇩🇪🇪🇸🇮🇹🇵🇱! Many thanks again to the European Research Council for making this project possible. cordis.europa.eu/article/id/4...

RESULTS Symposium on Sustainability Transformations - Include - Research centre for socially inclusive energy transitions Transformations to sustainability: Are we talking with or past each other?

What does it really mean to transform society toward sustainability?

On June 3, the RESULTS Symposium brings together researchers, activists, and professionals in Oslo for a day of conversations, collaboration, and reflection.

🕒 Today’s the last day to register!
🔗 shorturl.at/LZCV1
#Sustainability

Whales of hope: Whaling heritage, tourism, and community belonging in twenty-first-century Japan This article discusses the significance of whaling heritage in contemporary Japan. It distinguishes between whaling as lived socioeconomic practice on the one hand, and whaling heritage as social i...

My article "Whales of Hope: Whaling Heritage, Tourism, and Community Belonging in Twenty-First-Century Japan" has just been published. It is part of the special issue "Japan Futures" (eds. Fabio Gygi and Iza Kavedžija). Many thanks to the editors and reviewers. 🐳
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Whales of hope: Whaling heritage, tourism, and community belonging in twenty-first-century Japan This article discusses the significance of whaling heritage in contemporary Japan. It distinguishes between whaling as lived socioeconomic practice on the one hand, and whaling heritage as social i...

My article "Whales of Hope: Whaling Heritage, Tourism, and Community Belonging in Twenty-First-Century Japan" has just been published. It is part of the special issue "Japan Futures" (eds. Fabio Gygi and Iza Kavedžija). Many thanks to the editors and reviewers. 🐳
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I will forever be haunted by this footage.

Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity.

What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives.
🌎🦑🧪

Vil du bli medlem hos oss? Nå kan du søke medlemskap! Frist 15.juni - Akademiet for yngre forskere Vil du bli medlem hos oss? Nå kan du søke medlemskap! Frist 15.juni  Link to the English edition of the Call for applications Velkommen til åpent nettmøte med oss 27.mai kl. 12.00 – les mer og registr...

Akademiet for yngre forskere leter etter 10 nye medlemmer!

AYF samler fantastiske forskere i tidlig karriere der brenner for forskningspolitikk, forskningsformidling og vitenskapelig debatt.

Søknadsfristen er 15. juni

Mer info ⤵

akademietforyngreforskere.no/vil-du-bli-m...

Towards an Alternative Buddhist Modernity: Hòa Hảo Charity Healing and Herbal Medicine in the Mekong Delta This article examines the role of Hòa Hảo Buddhism in providing alternative healthcare, through traditional medicine and charity clinics, in the Mekong Delta. Based on participant observation and i...

Very proud of my partner Nhung Lu Rots, who has submitted her PhD dissertation "Engaged Buddhism and Environmentality among Buddhist Minorities in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam" @uio.no. A great achievement! One of the dissertation's articles was published recently: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Towards an Alternative Buddhist Modernity: Hòa Hảo Charity Healing and Herbal Medicine in the Mekong Delta This article examines the role of Hòa Hảo Buddhism in providing alternative healthcare, through traditional medicine and charity clinics, in the Mekong Delta. Based on participant observation and i...

Very proud of my partner Nhung Lu Rots, who has submitted her PhD dissertation "Engaged Buddhism and Environmentality among Buddhist Minorities in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam" @uio.no. A great achievement! One of the dissertation's articles was published recently: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

OCEH Lab

New on Bluesky!

We’re OCEH - a research hub at the University of Oslo @uio.no, exploring climate, nature & culture through the humanities.

Follow for research highlights, events, reading tips & snapshots from the OCEH Lab.

📸 OCEH Lab

hf.uio.no/oceh
#ClimateCrisis #EnvironmentalHumanities #envhum

The rise of end times fascism The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

THE RISE OF END TIMES FASCISM

My first major piece of the new Trump era, co-written with @astra.bsky.social.

The governing ideology of the far right has become a
monstrous, supremacist survivalism.

Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Sharing this video of excited people and wrestling spiders mostly to give you all a short break from doomscrolling. It may be hard to believe these days but there are still fun and interesting things happening in the world. Cherish them. 🕷️

RIP Hatakeyama Shigeatsu (1943-2025), an oyster fisherman from Tohoku who started a reforestation project to improve the coastal environment under the slogan "the forest is the lover of the sea" (森は海の恋人). In 2012, he was awarded a UN Forest Hero award for his work. 🦪🌱
www.asahi.com/ajw/articles...

Japanese American National Museum takes a stand against DOGE cuts to NEH The National Endowment for the Humanities warned museums across the country that it was slashing funding, including money previously pledged to places such as LACMA and the Japanese American National ...

Can we get more of this? “The Japanese American National Museum will ‘scrub nothing,’ Fujioka said, and instead will highlight the importance of DEI.

“Our community is based on diversity, equity is guaranteed to us in the Constitution, and inclusion is what we believe in,” Fujioka said.

Wetenschappers bijeen om zorgen over academische vrijheid in Nederland en VS In een zaal van de Universiteit Leiden spraken wetenschappers hun zorgen uit, en probeerden ze van elkaar te leren hoe ze zich tegen de invloed van de VS kunnen wapenen.

Mijn scriptie ging over Karl Popper’s Open Society: over de fundamenten van de democratie en de pijlers waarop ze rust. Zoals onafhankelijke pers en wetenschap.

Vanavond lees ik over de uitholling vd publieke omroep en de aanval op academische vrijheid.

Het kan snel gaan…

nos.nl/artikel/2562...

Ik ook! Vooral het feit dat ze zeggen reliekenhandel af te wijzen, maar niettemin gekozen hebben om zelf lichaamsdelen en heilige haren uit te delen, daarmee bevestigend dat relieken wel degelijk waarde hebben. M.a.w. ze hebben zelf goederen in omloop gebracht en zowel vraag als schaarste gecreëerd.

The Hungarian Model MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.

What did 14 years of autocratic populism produce in Hungary?
Poverty and corruption
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Letter of support: In solidarity with our colleagues at Columbia University A letter of support from faculty at the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian, and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oslo.

My colleagues and I at the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Uni Oslo) have written a statement of support for our colleagues at Columbia University. In solidarity with them - and others in the US who face censorship and oppression.
www.khrono.no/in-solidarit...

Fortunately our faculty's communication and social media staff haven't discovered bluesky yet, as far as I know. They're still on twitter and facebook.