Starting with music news this time, because the new choir term is really off to a flying start: we’ve had seven performances already, with another one coming up tomorrow. A particularly memorable occasion was the grand opening of Nokia’s new “Home of Radio” campus in Oulu, where we had the honour of both opening and concluding the proceedings as well as providing music for the ribbon-cutting ceremony with Christopher Tin’s beautiful and appropriately jubilant Sogno di Volare from the video game Civilization VI. Various luminaries were in attendance, including the President of the Republic of Finland himself, Alexander Stubb. 

It’s also been confirmed now that I will be appearing in the chorus of Ovllá, the new opera composed by Cecilia Damström for Oulu’s year as a European Capital of Culture. One of the performance languages is Northern Sámi, which I have next to no familiarity with despite it being one of Finland’s national languages, but I’ll take it as a challenge and an opportunity to learn. Another challenge is the sheer amount of work I’ve committed myself to: from late November to late April I’m going to have one of the busiest six-month periods of my life, as rehearsals for the opera will run in parallel with rehearsals and performances of A Christmas Carol, and around the time of the last opera performances, rehearsals for MASS will begin. How much Cassiopeia stuff I’ll be able to fit in among all this remains to be seen, but the usual Christmas concerts at least should be perfectly doable. 

On the academic front, I spent the first few work weeks after my summer vacation mostly preparing materials for a training module that I’m developing for a new thing the university’s graduate school is launching this year called the PhD Supervisors’ Academy. Among the things offered by the Academy is a set of short online courses on a range of topics that a PhD supervisor should know about, and I was invited to create one on AI. This being me, there will be a notable emphasis on critical thinking and responsible use, but I’m doing my best to avoid coming across as overly negative and highlight the opportunities as well. 

At the end of August I had to take some time to work on a conference manuscript that got conditionally accepted for publication, so I had to submit a major revision of it before the final decision. The paper definitely isn’t my best work and I felt there was a genuine possibility it might still be rejected after the revision, but thankfully it wasn’t. The conference in question is Tethics 2025, so my streak of having a paper there continues and I’ll get to do my usual trip to go see some old familiar faces. Should be a more relaxed trip than last year, too, since this time the conference doesn’t clash with any of my artistic engagements, and as a bonus I’ll get to visit a new city. 

My Title of Docent application is moving forward as well, with one (positive) reviewer statement in and another one hopefully coming soon. After that, I’ll need to arrange a date for my demonstration lecture, which does frankly feel a little bit pointless – I’m not all that convinced that one twenty-minute lecture can say anything decisive about me as an educator that my CV and teaching portfolio don’t – but then, it’s not like I’m suffering from any dearth of material from which to put together such a lecture. Besides, I’m due to give a guest presentation on the intersection of AI and ethics next week at Oulun Suomalainen Klubi and my plan is to make the demonstration lecture a compressed version of the presentation with some pedagogical interactions thrown in at strategic points, so I’m kind of killing two birds with one stone here. 

Before my vacation, I was interviewed by a journalist working on an article on the use of AI for content moderation on online platforms, more specifically for the detection of hate speech. He contacted me at the suggestion of a colleague of mine and we had a Zoom meeting where I gave him my views on the subject as an AI ethicist. This was my first time appearing as an expert in the media, so quite an exciting experience for me, and I think I managed not to make a complete fool of myself in the process. The article was published in August and is available online, though only in Finnish. 

Another (sort of) new thing in my professional life this academic year is that I’m serving as a teacher tutor for the new batch of students who’ve now begun their studies in the master’s programme in computer science and engineering. It’s only sort of new in the sense that I’ve already been tutoring some students since the beginning of the calendar year, but the new students are the first ones I’m shepherding right from day one. Technically, the most important part of the job is guiding the students in making their personal study plans, but if my experiences from the spring term are any indication, simply listening to the students’ worries and offering encouragement is also a big part of it. 

This got me thinking about how the need for formal tertiary education in subjects such as computing is sometimes questioned on the grounds that there are loads of online resources available that you can use to learn just about any technical skill on your own. It’s even been suggested that AI tutors will make human teachers obsolete by being available 24/7 and adapting perfectly to the student’s learning style and goals. I can’t dismiss such arguments entirely, but I think they’re assuming some kind of “ideal” student who’s crystal clear on what they need to learn and perfectly self-directed in finding and using the required resources. For all those “non-ideal” students, a university provides a structure for your studies and a social environment designed to carry you through them and beyond. 

As it happens, both these aspects – providing structure and presenting a human face – are part of the role of the teacher tutor, and before you ask: yes, I’m fully aware of how convenient this conclusion is for me personally. I don’t suppose anyone likes to think of themselves as easily replaceable, so maybe I’m just trying to rationalise the belief that the university and I matter and will continue to matter even as technology marches on. Or maybe I do have a genuine point here that isn’t just about me refusing to go gently into the good night of AI-induced obsolescence. Take your pick!