Magnús Smári
Smárason

I operate across a continuum: understanding AI systems, governing them responsibly, building the infrastructure, and transferring sovereignty to the organisations that own them. Governance is what makes building possible. Building without foundations fails. Foundations without building stagnate. The answer is both, in sequence.

At University of Akureyri, I led Iceland's first comprehensive university AI policy and oversee production systems including BORG (hybrid AI platform) and Arctic Tracker (conservation monitoring). I teach AI implementation courses, host the Temjum tæknina podcast, served on the Technology Development Fund expert panel at Rannís (spring and fall 2025), and am co-authoring The Irreducible Human (Brill Publishers).

My research is empirically grounded, not theoretical. The thesis identifies two systemic problems: Responsibility Fog — how accountability dissolves when decisions get distributed across algorithms and committees — and Cognitive Debt — how judgment atrophies when we outsource thinking to machines.

Before this work, I spent sixteen years as a paramedic and firefighter — learning pattern recognition under pressure and diagnostic thinking when stakes are real. In November 2022, the week I moved to office work, ChatGPT launched. I started building AI systems immediately.

The models are commoditising. The value has shifted to context, orchestration, governance, and domain knowledge — all of which are local, organisational, cultural, and human. Small nations have structural advantages here. Iceland’s renewable energy, cultural coherence, and EU-adjacent regulatory position are strengths, not limitations.

The question driving my work: How do we deploy AI that builds human capacity instead of replacing it?