Paper short abstract

In Norwegian work life the hype around AI is omnipresent and challenges how, who, what and when to trust in knowledge-workers’ daily work. This study investigates emerging technologies’ impact on (dis/mis)trust, and how epistemic practices become reconfigured in AI-mediated work.

Paper long abstract

Advances in emerging technologies, like digital systems and artificial intelligence, are increasingly becoming interwoven into Norwegian knowledge-intensive work, reshaping not only the epistemic practices, but meaning-making, norms and values. In Norway, characterised as a high-trust country and one of the most digitalised countries in the world, the hype around AI and beliefs in ‘techno–solutionism’ reigns supreme. However, increasingly, worries about the ‘loss of the Nordic gold’, e.g. trust, figure in the public discourse around AI implementation. This study investigates trust in technology (or the lack thereof), and how emerging technologies might reshape different trust relations at work. It builds on ethnography from two Norwegian firms, one in the public services and one in the media industry, currently implementing AI at a large scale.

We understand trust as embedded in actions yet to come: Trust exists only by virtue of mutual and reciprocal expectations of something not yet realised (Sørhaug 1996). In anthropology, recent research suggests that trust takes new and different shapes as our lives are fully entangled in a digital sociality (Maguire & Albris, 2024, Pink & Quilty, 2025) and that distrust, a form of withholding trust, a “trustless trust,” is put forth by developers who promise to erase the need for trust in institutions (Bruun et al., 2020). Hence, when confronted with emerging technologies, trust might become one-directional, rather than reciprocal. Correspondingly, understanding mis/distrust as emerging social forms in work life is crucial, especially as human-technology interactions become more complex with AI as a collaborator.