-The next step is useful applications of our models

 Terje Brasethvik was assigned the new research director at NorwAI this autumn for a year to come. It is an interregnum, though.  Professor Kerstin Bach will return after her sabbatical leave next autumn. 

Nevertheless, Terje Brasethvik is well used to the revolving doors between academia and industry over the last 20 years. Both as a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct associate professor at NTNU and various positions in the private sector.

-Not the less valuable experience for an incoming research director at a center designed for innovation?

-Absolutely! It is fortunate. My ambition in this job is to stimulate research for practical and tangible use of our research, says Terje Brasethvik.

Long Career

Educated at NTNU back in 2004 with a PhD in information systems, related to semantics and search, he has been in and out of the university as a researcher and adjunct associate professor for years since then. He has also been employed as a senior engineer at Statens Vegvesen for five years. Terje have spent ten years as a consultant at the Scandinavian consultancy company Bouvet, in the Trondheim office, now serving as department manager lately, accumulating insights on efficient and useroriented solutions within technology, consulting, design and communications.

At one point, some years ago, he even found time to contribute at the start-up activities in Trondheim.

-So, what’s next for NorwAI, Terje?

-We just delivered our underway evaluation to the Norwegian Research Council. I greatly value the report from our international Scientific Advisory Board who commends the width and balance of our work across all AI work-packages.  The advisory board says, and I quote: “NorwAI is off to an impressive start and thus has a strong foundation for making important contributions in the second half of its lifetime.”

Societal impacts

For the coming years, the advisory board recommends a focus on real-world challenges in sectors like healthcare, education, public services, finance, and energy and strengthening the focus on societal impacts.

-I value their feedback and happily enough, this is very well aligned with our plans. This work package ‘AI in Society’ examines societal aspects of artificial intelligence technologies as they are developed, debated, and implemented. Responsibility and trust are closely linked. To further support our work in this domain the ‘AI in Society’ work will be strengthened  with one additional professor, Eric Monteiro at NTNU, and one additional PhD student in 2025.

-Language models have been the “talk-of-the-town” the last years. What is next here?

-NorwAI is maybe best known for our ability to build Norwegian large language models that works. Since this summer, there has been more than 10 000 downloads of our models that are available for Scandinavian companies and public services.  The next step is to stimulate the use of the models into applications in everyday use. Interesting enough there is, in my opinion, an international trend for using smaller models trained for specific purposes, says Terje Brasethvik.

Smaller LLMs

His views are supported also by tech giants like Microsoft who is an AI frontrunner both in the user and business sectors.

-There are indications that smaller models are preferred. They are easier to handle, needs less compute and meet European laws and regulations better. NorwAI never intended to compete in the race for the bigger or biggest LLM models, he says.  

AI results from NorwAI partners like Schibsted and SpareBank1 SMN points in the same direction. Smaller models offer more control for the users, and can also be hosted inhouse for protection of the companies’ own data.

-Soon, I think we should work with our partners and other interesting players in sectors that need the help of AI to improve their work processes and be more efficient, says Terje Brasethvik, adding that building a large national or Nordic language model still is on NorwAI’s agenda when legislative and regulatory uncertainties find their solution.

For our country, in Terjes opinion sectors like health is one of the fields to explore for AI research and developments for obvious reasons like the changing demography, the need for labor and the rapid international innovative developments.

-Is it all about language models?

-Not at all! Even if there has been a lot of attention on LLMs lately. NorwAI, however, has a broad research agenda on AI with heavy asset industry partners that really challenge us in their search for the new solutions. There are also important societal questions to be answered as said before.

-It is really an exciting arena to work in right now, says Terje Brasethvik.

2024-11-26

By Rolf D. Svendsen