News & Events
Upcoming events in NorwAI
Brand-new course from NorwAI to begin in February 2025
The course “Innovation with Large Language Models” draws on the latest research results from the Norwegian Research Center for AI Innovation (NorwAI) on large language models. The offer is run in a mix of digital and physical sessions and targets decisionmakers and programmers who want to make use of LLMs.
2024-12-17
AI must prove itself in 2025
Adoption of AI outside the safe confines of the research laboratory is proving patchy. Expectations were high after Open AI’s breakthroughs in 2022, but its impact on society and industries are now being discussed as results are lagging significantly behind. Professor Eric Monteiro who recently joined NorwAI’s core team, has views on the cyclic character of computer science technology.
2024-12-17
A call for Nordic collaboration
Leading lingvistic researchers and data engineers from the greater Nordic region was gathered to share competence and challenges. To keep up with the technology pace, even more cross border cooperation is needed.
2024-11-29
Where does the road ahead lead for NorwAI and language models? A small roadmap for NorLLM
The demand and curiosity for Norwegian generative language models has been notable. The six models NorwAI published this summer have been downloaded more than 10 000 times. Plans for what comes next is taking shape.
2024-11-26
Terje Brasethvik new research director at NorwAI
For the coming year, Terje Brasethvik, joins NorwAI’s core team as the Innovation Director. Read his thoughts on the new trends in AI research.
Photo: Kai T. Dragland, NTNU
2024-11-26
The internal NorwAI Forums helps overcome boundaries for partner innovations
NorwAIs innovation team meets regularly to identify and mitigate innovation challenges. Till Christopher Lech in SINTEF Digital invited partners to work together. Here is a report from the meeting.
2024-11-26
Till Lech of SINTEF Digital new Innovation Director
Research Manager Till Christopher Lech at SINTEF Digital in Oslo was appointed Innovation Director in August this year. What are his ambitions in his new position?
2024-10-29
Nordic Language Technology Get-together to Include Minority Languages
As society is becoming increasingly digitized, professionals in the Nordics want to ensure that the new solutions that language technology and artificial intelligence can offer, are available for all languages in the Nordics.
The organizers for the Get-together in Trondheim on November 5th and 6th hope to foster cooperation across national borders and languages. They will also launch a new language technology platform for small languages and have a poster session.
The conference is a cooperation between ASTIN (Arbetsgruppen för språkteknologi i Norden) with members UiT The Artic University, of Norway, Språkrådet vid Institutet för språk och folkminnen in Sweden, Dansk Sprognævn in Denmark and Språkrådet, NorwAI in cooperation with NorwAI, Norwehian Research Center for AI Innovation.
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2024-10-29
Several new research positions on its way in 2025
NorwAI aimed at educating up to 500 master students and 40 research fellows. Before the final lap of the research center’s lifetime till 2028, several new postions are to be announced in 2025. And where do NorwAI stand on its educational ambitions?
Medbric to assist doctors in the primary healthcare service
Jon Espen Ingvaldsen of NorwAI and Jorunn Thaulow of the University of Oslo has joined hands to bring AI state-of-the-art-technology into medical practice. The test period showed very good results after more than 100 GPs participated.
Photo: Kai T. Dragland, NTNU
2024-09-30
AI: what will it take for Norway to succeed?
-We need more compute, large Norwegian language models, regulation and research, Minister of Research and Higher Education Oddmund Hoel said at NorwAi Innovate 2024 – and underlined that in our country we are not able to do all things at once.
Photo: Kai T. Dragland
2024-09-27
Lær med NorwAIs eksperter
NorwAI is preparing a special course on language models for important decision-makers and developers who want to use the technology in their own applications. In the course "Innovation with generative language models", NorwAI's experts will share knowledge and their skills with those who want to lead the way in Norwegian AI utilization. (Full article in Norwegian)
2024-08-29
Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at ICTIR '24
We are thrilled to announce that the paper, "Towards a Formal Characterization of User Simulation Objectives in Conversational Information Access" by Nolwenn Bernard and Krisztian Balog, has received the Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at the 14th International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR '24)!
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2024-08-16
Introducing IAI MovieBot
IAI MovieBot is an on-going project by the IAI group at the University of Stavanger, and is a conversational recommender system for movies.
Throughout a conversation, IAI MovieBot asks you questions related to your preferences, such as the genre and the release year of the movie you are looking for. Based on your answers, IAI MovieBot tries to recommend you a movie that matches your preferences and reply to your question on it.
2024-08-05
NorwAI at Arendalsuka
AI is a hot topic at the Arendal week also in 2024. NorwAI is invited to attend four meetings at the largest political gathering in the country.
- Monday, 12th August, 13:00: Are the AI-giants stealing our own language? Why we need Norwegian language models for a national AI development. Debate on Norwegian language models vs foreign alternatives - organized by Kantega and ICT-Norway. With i.a. Gard Steiro, editor-in-chief VG and Jon Espen Ingvaldsen, NorwAI. Location: Castelle
- Tuesday, 13th August, 14:00: Cooperation for building a national AI industry – what will we need to build national services for AI - organized by SpareBank1 SMN, NorwAI and Kantega. With i.a. John Markus Lervik, Cognite and Jon Atle Gulla, NorwAI. Location: SpareBank1 SR, Torvet Arendal.
- Thursday, 15th August, 13:00: How to secure trust in AI-systems - organized by NTNU. With i.a. minister Oddmund Hoel, Inga Strümke and Sven Størmer Thaulow- Location: Clarion Tyholmen.
- Thursday, 15th August, 16:00: Trust in knowledge? Debate on AI, knowledge and responsibility - organized by UHR (Universities Norway). With i.a. Erik Bolstad, SNL and Terje Brasethvik, NorwAI. Location: UIA-teltet.
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Feel free to ask for meetings with NorwAI - we will be in Arendal from Monday onwards.
Contact: NorwAI Communication Manager Rolf D. Svendsen, rolf.d.svendsen@ntnu.no, phone +47 918 59 525
2024-07-29
Your summer read by Keith and Knut
We asked two leading researchers at the Department of Computer Science at NTNU for their summer read recommendations. Professor Keith Downing and Associate Professor Knut Magne Risvik were not difficult to ask, and they both put together a list in several formats with some brief comments on their choices.
2024-06-27
A guide to Norwegian Large Language Models (NorLLM)
NorwAI has since 2021 worked to develop large language models based on Norwegian data. NorwAI has built four test models that are steppingstones to build a super large Norwegian foundation model.
In 2024, NorwAI’s language modeling efforts will diverge into two distinct tracks. There is a need to train a Norwegian generative model that is sufficiently large to support the Norwegian language at the same level as English and other major languages supported by international models. Simultaneously, there is a demand for smaller models that can be easily optimized for specific use cases and controlled locally using proprietary data and custom adaptations.
The smaller models will be launched in Oslo on May 15th.
What have NorwAI learned from its work on language models? The path for NorLLM is described in our new section: key learning, lessons learned, observations, on privacy, hurtful examples, and other articles in our guide to NorLLM.
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Visit our webpages in English and Norwegian, dedicated to NorLLM:
2024-04-29
National launch of the next gen NorLLM models - Will be opened by the minister of trade and industry
Cecilie Myrseth, minister of trade and industry, will attend and welcome the audience when NorwAI is launching their new language models. The minister will talk on her expectations to the use of language models.
On May 15th NorwAI will present and launch the next generation of its NorLLM models. In addition, a group of partners, cooperating companies and organizations will present projects and plans for their use of the models.
The venue for the event is at the Schibsted office in Akersgata, Oslo and will take place between 09:30 am and 13:00 pm that Wednesday. Doors will open at 9:30. Presentations starts at 10:00. Admittance is free of charge.
Photo: Kai T. Dragland, NTNU
2024-04-26
NorwAI to cooperate with NTNU’s School of Entrepreneurship
After summer 2024 the two will introduce a new program to foster collaborative knowledge exchange between AI students from NorwAI and students from the School of Entrepreneurship.
2024-03-22
PhD Yujie Xing defended her thesis
The thesis proposes and evaluates novel methods for improving the quality and diversity of chatbot responses in open domains. On March 18th she also gave her trial lecture on “The role of academic research on conversational AI in the age of ChatGPT”.
2024-03-22
A closer look into personal data
Protecting personal information is challenging with complex AI models that are hungry for data. Norsk Regnesentral and the University of Oslo and Oslo Met has looked into the matter.
2024-03-19
-Vi treng generative norske språkmodeller
- Treng me generative språkmodellar på norsk? Svaret er eit rungande ja! Modellane må kunna formidla norske verdiar og haldningar, og dei må formidla god norsk - både bokmål og nynorsk.
Det sa Språkrådets direktør Åse Wetås da hun innledde på Trondheim Tech Port og NorwAI’s innovasjonsfrukost om språkmodeller og innovasjon 14. februar -24.
2024-02-27
Can competitors cooperate? Yes!
NorwAi partners Kongsberg and Cognite fight in the same market, both companies with unique strengths. Under the guidance of SINTEF Digital the competitors has joined hands to overcome challenges they else would have struggled with. Also other NorwAI partners are looking at the unique cooperation taking place in the work package Hybrid AI Analytics.
Foto: Kai T. Dragland
2024-02-27