Mathias K. Hauglid
We congratulate Mathias K. Hauglid for successfully defending his PhD dissertation and achieving the PhD degree in Law at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on April 26th 2024.
We congratulate Mathias K. Hauglid for successfully defending his PhD dissertation and achieving the PhD degree in Law at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on April 26th 2024.
His thesis, "Bias and Discrimination in Clinical Decision Support Systems Based on Artificial Intelligence", explores and systematizes different types of biases and their sources, focusing on the extent to which biases in clinical decision support systems based on artificial intelligence can amount to ‘discrimination’ as defined in EU law.
The title of Hauglid's trial lecture, "The Role of European Human Rights Law in Relation to AI systems: Past, Present, and Future".
Supervisors:
Evaluation committee:
One of the most promising utilisations of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare is Clinical Decision Support (AI-CDS) systems: AI systems that support clinical assessments and decision-making by producing relevant classifications and predictions that may be relied on by clinicians and patients. However, an oft-cited concern is that AI systems can be ‘biased’ – a nebulous term often used to describe certain undesirable side-effects of AI. There exists a widespread apprehension that the use of AI to aid decision-making might, due to the presence of ‘bias,’ produce results that amount to discrimination. In response to various risks associated with AI systems, the EU legislature has proposed a common European regulatory framework for AI systems – the Artificial Intelligence Act. While facilitating innovation and trade, the AI Act aims to ensure the effective protection of the safety and fundamental rights of EU citizens, including the right to non-discrimination. Particularly, the proposed AI Act will require that certain preventive measures are taken to ensure compliance with applicable requirements before AI systems can lawfully be deployed in the EU. These preventive measures may, in one form or another, require that discrimination in AI systems must be assessed before deployment. The assessment of discrimination in an AI-CDS system before its deployment invokes the need for development of appropriate assessment methodologies. The objective of the thesis is to develop certain methodological elements of assessing discrimination in these systems in a pre-deployment setting. More precisely, the thesis sets out to develop considerations, principles, criteria, and methods that ought to be included in a pre-deployment discrimination assessment based on the non-discrimination principle in EU law. As a foundation for the development of these methodological elements, the thesis explores the issue of ‘bias’ in AI-CDS systems and the mechanisms through which equality-related biases may occur in these systems.
Several of our researchers represented SFI Visual Intelligence at EurIPS 2025 – the NeurIPS-endorsed European AI conference.
Congratulations to Senior Research Scientist Anders Waldeland, who was awarded the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025 at the Dig X Subsurface conference in Oslo, Norway.
Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence that can automatically measure the heart's structure – both quickly and accurately (Popular science article on sciencenorway.no)
Congratulations to Jørgen Agersborg, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on November 28th.
State Secretary Marianne Wilhelmsen visited UiT The Arctic University of Norway to learn more about SFI Visual Intelligence and UiT's AI initiatives in education and research.
KI-chatboten Grok har fortalt brukere at verdens rikeste mann er både smartere og sprekere enn noen andre i verden – inkludert basketballstjernen LeBron James og Leonardo da Vinci (Norwegian news article on tv2.no)
Forskere har utviklet kunstig intelligens som automatisk kan måle hjertets struktur – både raskt og presist (Norwegian popular science article on forskning.no)
The Visual Intelligence Graduate School gathered our early career researchers for a 3-Day Science Communication workshop at Skibotn field station outside of Tromsø, Norway.
Onsdag inngikk Aker Nscale og UiT Norges arktiske universitet en ti-årig samarbeidsavtale for å utvikle og styrke kompetansemiljøene for kunstig intelligens i Narvik og Nord-Norge. Aker Nscale garanterer for 100 millioner kroner i avtaleperioden (news story on uit.no)
Centre Director Robert Jenssen and PhD Candidate Lars Uebbing had two fruitful days together with researchers at The Alan Turing Institute's headquarters in London
Centre Director Robert Jenssen represented Visual Intelligence at Outlook North in Harstad, Norway
Senior Research Scientist Anders Waldeland is nominated for the Digital Trailblazer 2025 Award. The winner is announced at the Dig X Subsurface conference in Oslo, Norway in December.
Visual Intelligence researchers have developed an AI to automatically measure the heart's structure – both quickly and accurately. They believe it can help doctors detect and treat cardiovascular diseases faster.
Samuel Kuttner and Elin Kile presented research on PET and artificial intelligence at evening seminar on early detection of prostate cancer organized by the Norwegian Prostate Cancer Assocation.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen represented Visual Intelligence at Svarte Natta 2025 – North Norway's journalist and media conference organized by the Norwegian Union of Journalists.
Congratulations to PhD Candidate Preetraj Bhoodoo, who recently won the Best Poster Presentation Award at the PRESIMAL Autumn Reserach School 2025.
We happily welcome Sigurd Almli Hanssen and Adrian Duric as new PhD Candidates at SFI Visual Intelligence's hubs in Tromsø and Oslo respectively.
AI expert Eirik Agnalt Østmo explains that the law is intended to make AI technology safe for everyone (Popular science article on sciencenorway.no)
Aitor Sánchez is a PhD candidate at the Intelligent Systems Group of the University of the Basque Country in Spain. He visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from March to June 2025.
We happily welcome Nicolo Grometto as a new PhD Candidate at SFI Visual Intelligence in Bodø, Norway.