How are cleaning robots impacting the health sector? Are they eliminating opportunities for caregivers to socialise with older adults living at home that cleaning tasks facilitated? Or do they add time to sit down and have a coffee?

Superviser: Roger Søraa

Supervisor: Roger Søraa

Collaborator: UiO 

Small language groups, in particular indegionous languages, face a double dsicrimination in terms of representation in digital systems. Societal historic bias, as well as lack of support and representation in datasets, calls for a rethinking of how smaller language groups can be treated in good ways in digital systems. This MA project will work closely with computer scientists interested in the topic.

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Sami language experts
Project: BIAS

Collaborators: University of Tokyo, Nordlansdsforskning

After getting a job, new employees are often met with several systems measuring how they do their work. This follows a long line of historic worker surveillance, but what does the siutation look like in 2025? The intended MA topic will investigate new hires' navigation of the labor market.

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, work experts

Project: BIAS

Collaborator: Recruitment agencies

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Jennifer Elise Branlat
Project: SOMAT

Technologies such as AI often comes with engraved cultural  meanings. Thus, it is important to investigate the sociotechnical connections and differences between countries when transporting technology from one cultural context t another. This MA project will investigate how the Korean AI care robot Hyodol is interpretated in a Norwegian context.

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Aud Uhlen Obstfelder
Project: SOMAT

Collaborator: KAIST

AI in work contextes often comes with the promise of increased efficiency and streamlining of workflow. However, implementing AI also cause changes in work practices, skills required and division of labour. This MA will work closly with municipalities (TK?) to investigate how their use of AI effects work practices.

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Kristine Ask
Project: BAI

Chatbots are integrated into public sector as intermediaries between municipalities and citizens. What effects does this have on the services and information delivered by municipalities? What are the risks involved and who are most likely to face those risks?

Supervisors: Kristine Ask, Roger Søraa
Project: BAI

Collaborator: Prokom

Chatbots allow for new ways for people to communicate and interact with their local government. Could chatbots be used to increase democratic participation by offering more inclusive and accessible paths to participation? What would those chatbots do and what challenges could they pose?

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Kristine Ask
Project: BAI

Collaborators: University of Vaasa (Synthetica), possibly others

While issues with hallucinations and poor security is making it challenging to implement AI in serious settings, users are taking to these same technologies for fun. How are chatbots and other AI technologies used as entertainment? What kind of playful and pleasurable experiences does human-AI relationships offer?

Supervisor: Kristine Ask

Collaborators: University of Vaasa (Synthetica)

TikTok is one of the most popular platforms on the planet, yet is largely villified in public discourse as either mindnumbing entertainment or Chinese surveillance, in star contrast to how users report on their experience of a platform. This MA project will study how norwegian media and policy document frames and presents the platform.

Supervisor: Kristine Ask

TikTok is an important part of peoples lives across the planet. Much of TikTok research is based on analysis of content, while notably fewer studies have interviewed actual users. Adressing this gap, this MA project will seek to interview and study various groups of TikTok users to understand how the platform fits into their everyday lives - and how use and context shape each other.

Supervisor: Kristine Ask

Nursing and medicine are situated practices. Nurses and doctors draw on different sources of knowledge when making decisions about treatment and healthcare.

While we know something about how professionals combine factual knowledge with clinical observations and assessments (practical knowledge and clinical judgment), we know less about how new and advanced technology, combined with gender and age, affects their experience of competence and work capacity (well-being at work). To ensure a sustainable health and care service, it is crucial to understand how nurses and doctors perceive their competence and work capacity, especially in light of new and advanced technology. This knowledge is important because health and care services face significant challenges with a shortage of qualified healthcare personnel, increasing demand for healthcare services, and high turnover.

The Health Personnel Commission has pointed out that measures are needed to educate, recruit, and retain personnel to meet future needs. By understanding how technology, gender, and age affect healthcare professionals' experience of competence and well-being, we can develop better strategies to support and retain these important professional groups, thereby ensuring a more stable and efficient healthcare service.

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Aud Uhlen Obstfelder, Randi Stokke

Technology design affects how healthcare professionals learn and use it, as technologies are never neutral. They are created with specific purposes and choices, which include both material qualities and development processes. There is often a gap between design and actual use, which can be due to a lack of understanding of users' needs by the designers.

Learning new technology is a complex and unpredictable process that can disrupt routine tasks. Therefore, the need for learning must be recognized by both healthcare professionals themselves and their leaders. To use technology effectively, they must first learn how it works, and this requires a complex learning process that combines intuitive impressions of the technology with previous experiences.

Paramedics and intensive care nurses work under different conditions, but they often use the same advanced medical technology. Paramedics operate mainly pre-hospitally, in ambulance services, and encounter patients in acute situations outside hospitals, where their work requires quick decision-making and the ability to stabilize patients on-site. Intensive care nurses, on the other hand, work in hospitals, often in intensive care units, where they provide vital care to critically ill patients. It is important to understand the differences in use and the continuous learning and adaptation processes to bring this knowledge back to development environments. Both professional groups use advanced medical technical equipment, but their work environments and tasks are very different.

This shows how the design and application of technology must be adapted to different working conditions to ensure effective use and patient safety.

Supervisors: Roger Søraa, Aud Uhlen Obstfelder, Randi Stokke

Given the global nature of AI technologies and the history of peaceful democracies in both countries, how can Norway and Canada collaborate to develop models for global civil governance of AI? This is important now, because there are frameworks for controlling dataand communications that are National, but very little International governance, and even less coordination of civil society in global governance. 

Collaborators: The Aula Fellowship for AI Science, Tech, and Policy

Surveying the emergence of AI as a globalized infrastructure: examples from Norway and Canada.  What is infrastucture? How is AI infrasturtcture being designed and iompleneted in various jurisdicitions? What can people learn from each other?

Collaborators: The Aula Fellowship for AI Science, Tech, and Policy

Are existing global governance models in AI sufficient to its emerging place as infrastructure in society? The answer from most policymakers is a resounding no. What do they want to see in terms of governance tools? Who and where are these efforts happening, and who is involved? How can citizens be involved?

Collaborators: The Aula Fellowship for AI Science, Tech, and Policy

What do AI literacy programs do well, and how do they fail? A comparative survey and analysis of program designers and learners, in Norway and in Canada. This is important, because citizens who don't understand what's happenening can't engage with designing their own social systems. This can lead to dangerous social situations. Scholars are working on understanding what AI Literacy entails and needs to include, which this work could inform.

Collaborators: The Aula Fellowship for AI Science, Tech, and Policy