Hi, everyone, and greetings from Umeå! Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:

#1 Nordforsk has funded 17 new research projects to make the most of the potentials and mitigate the risks of AI in the Nordics and Baltics. Among them is Nordic Perspectives on Collaborative AI for Blue-collar Work (CAI-BLUE), featuring dear colleagues, including my group co-leader Donny McMillan. Rarely have I been this happy about a funding decision that does not directly concern me!

#2 This week, I am visiting the Umeå Institute of Design, hosted by Karey Helms. That makes this a good moment to share the news that, led by Karey and in collaboration with Meike Schalk, we’ll present a pictorial at the TEI 2026 conference on Rewilding Human Life: An Annotated Portfolio of Seasonal Crafts with Children. Here’s the abstract to give you a taste: “We explore rewilding human life as a deliberate engagement with the environments people care about to cultivate wonder. This is through an annotated portfolio of seasonal crafts completed by the first author in her home and local outdoor places with family, friends, and neighbors. The crafts are based upon monthly activities from a Swedish children’s book on experimenting with nature. We present the process and outcomes of forty activities, and annotate encounters with wildness and wonder. From this visual calendar, we reflect upon tensions within seasonal crafts as a regenerative design practice that bridges nature-entangled design with social sustainability. This includes the role of technology in rewilding human life, the frivolity of everyday crafts, and the inclusion of children in ecological care. We contribute practice-based examples of rewilding human life and call for a diversity of ages in designing more-than-human relations differently.”

#3 On Friday, Bruce Schneier visited our department at Stockholm University and gave a seminar largely matching this text on AI and Trust. Very much worth a read.

#4 Save the date: AI for Humanity and Society 2026 is happening in Linköping on November 10-11. with the theme Robots and Autonomous Systems in Everyday Life. I’m enjoying preparing this conference with Hannah Pelikan, and excited that Janet Vertesi and Steve Benford will be joining us as keynote speakers.

-A