The Impact of Generative AI on Political Knowledge and Democracy
Political scientist Rune Karlsen opened the seminar with a presentation on the KnowAI project, examining the impact of generative AI on political knowledge, opinion formation, and democracy. His research highlighted concerns such as misinformation, echo chambers, and polarisation—while also exploring how AI can be used to strengthen democratic engagement.
How do we communicate with language models?
Linguists Ingrid Lossius Falkum and Nicholas Allott followed with an exploration of how humans perceive and interact with large language models (LLMs). They raised key philosophical and empirical questions about whether we attribute human-like characteristics to chatbots and how this influences communication.
Nicholas Allott is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo.
Following the presentations, participants engaged in discussions on the challenges and opportunities AI presents in public discourse. Professor Arne Bang Huseby from dScience moderated the event.
Thank you to the audience for great questions and to the speakers for excellent presentations!
See a full recording of the event here
See images from the event here:
Photos: Christoffer Hals, dScience, UiO.
Speakers
Rune Karlsen is Professor at the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo, and Project Leader for KnowAI. His research focuses on political communication, new media technology, media effects, electoral research and political elites.
Ingrid Lossius Falkum is Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Communication at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on linguistic communication at the intersection of linguistics, philosophy and psychology. Interests include the development of communication skills in children, how word meanings are adjusted in context, and challenges related to modeling language comprehension in AI systems.
Nicholas Allott is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo. His work includes pragmatics (especially relevance theory), inference in communication, word meaning, legal language, the philosophy of linguistics, and Chomsky’s thought.