Automated Decision-Making + Society: Recent Episodes
ADM+S Centre
Utopian visions of automated decision-making (ADM) promise new levels of personalisation, control and choice in our lives. Yet, we still know very little about how ADM is being incorporated, reinvented or resisted as part of everyday lives. Our guest speakers are researchers and industry partners from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) a cross-disciplinary, national research centre, which aims to create the knowledge and strategies needed for responsible, ethical, and inclusive automated decision-making.
This panel conversation was part of a recent event hosted by the Platform Economies Research Network (PERN), in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
The event titled 'Digital Platform Economies: Value from data?' was held at the New School in New York City on 24-26 April 2024.
This panel explores value propositions articulated by platform governance models. These platforms mediate interactions between data, content, and value. The panel examines the different ways that value is posited and narrated as precursors to regulatory arbitration. The latter typically manifest as managerial interventions and market-framing instruments – as in, for example, “the data market.” This panel investigates those dynamics through specific examples of platform governance: automated ad-tech blacklisting, content moderation, drone delivery services, and financial transactions between platforms and news media organizations. The aim is to explore different value propositions at play across each of these contexts. This session addresses the following questions: How do particular value propositions justify specific governance and managerial interventions? How do market-framing narratives (e.g., the data market) become dominant? What are their expressions in different contexts? How do these approaches embed diverse strategies for distributing regulatory and civic functions between private and public actors?
Featured in this conversation is ADM+S researchers Dr Thao Phan, Dr Jake Goldenfein, Assoc Prof James Meese, Angela Xiao Wu from PERN, and moderated by Linda Huber from PERN.
Learn more about this event: https://www.admscentre.org.au/digital-platform-economies-program/
This panel conversation was part of a recent event hosted by the Platform Economies Research Network (PERN), in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
The event titled 'Digital Platform Economies: Value from data?' was held at the New School in New York City on 24-26 April 2024.
The session examines how core concepts, such as commodity, capital, labor, rent, data, and information, operate with reference to specific platform contexts. Each panelist will present a brief case study from their research to outline general questions relating to relevant concepts. The aim is to consider how each case either challenges or confirms conventional understandings of particular concepts and to stimulate general discussion of theoretical challenges and research methods.
Featured in this conversation is Na Fu (PERN), Koray Çalışkan (PERN), Franziska Cooiman (PERN), Silvia Lindtner (PERN), Janet Roitman (ADM+S/PERN), and moderated by Emma Park (PERN).
Learn more about this event: https://www.admscentre.org.au/digital-platform-economies-program/
This panel conversation was part of a recent event hosted by the Platform Economies Research Network (PERN), in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
The event titled 'Digital Platform Economies: Value from data?' was held at the New School in New York City on 24-26 April 2024.
This session examines how economies and economic objects are designed in Web3. These digital economies arise through the deployment of socio-technical mechanisms (e.g., blockchain, contracts) and financial investments in digital assets (e.g., NFTs, ‘unreal’ estate). At the same time, digital communities capitalize on NFTs and tokens to build forms of self-governance and realize economic benefits. Much of the Web3 economy rests on the simultaneous construction of digital worlds and digital economies that mirror but don’t necessarily translate to non-digital forms of value and modes of exchange.
The design of these digital economies involves processes of assetization, commodification, and financialization. The session examines the following questions: How are Web3 digital economies designed? What processes, infrastructures, and practices are implicated in these designs? What forms of ‘new’ value are emerging? What forms of value are increasingly irrelevant? And what methods are applicable to the examination of these domains?
Featured in this conversation is ADM+S researchers Fabio Mattioli, Dr Kelsie Nabben, Prof Ellie Rennie, Kean Birch from PERN, and moderated by Prof Janet Roitman, co-founder and director of PERN.
Learn more about this event: https://www.admscentre.org.au/digital-platform-economies-program/
This panel conversation was part of a recent event hosted by the Platform Economies Research Network (PERN), in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
The event titled 'Digital Platform Economies: Value from data?' was held at the New School in New York City on 24-26 April 2024.
This session focuses on digital twins, which are virtual representations tied to physical objects, processes, or environments. Defined by a two-way flow of information, digital twins feed powerful machine-learning operations capable of autonomously monitoring, simulating, and even modulating the ‘real’ world. The aim is to encompass the physical world within interactive monitoring and control systems that promise novel forms of value extraction based on comprehensive, real-time data capture and processing. While the market for digital twins is predicted to grow in value from $10bn to more than $100bn over the next five years, the nature, scope, and viability of digital twins are unclear. This panel asks: How do digital twins generate value? How are they imagined to reshape labor, logistics, and future planning? What regulatory interventions are needed as government and industry are increasingly drawn to the lure of digital platforms for modeling futures and modulating the real? What multidisciplinary methods of analysis and lines of inquiry are relevant to this emerging domain?
Featured in this conversation is ADM+S researchers Zoe Horn, Assoc Prof Michael Richardson, Prof Mark Andrejevic, and moderated by Seyram Avle from PERN.
Learn more about the event: https://www.admscentre.org.au/digital-platform-economies-program/
This keynote conversation was part of a recent event hosted by the Platform Economies Research Network (PERN), in collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
The event titled 'Digital Platform Economies: Value from data?' was held at the New School in New York City on 24-26 April 2024.
Featured in this keynote conversation is ADM+S director Prof Julian Thomas and Associate director Prof Jean Burgess, moderated by Paul Dourish from PERN.
Learn more about the event: https://www.admscentre.org.au/digital-platform-economies-program/
In this episode we're joined by Prof Paul Henman from the University of Queensland to discuss 'Automated decision-making in New South Wales: mapping and analysis of the use of ADM systems by State and Local governments', a research report produced in partnership by the ADM+S Centre and the New South Wales Ombudsman.
On 8 March 2024, ADM+S researchers Prof Kim Weatherall and Dr Jose-Miguel Bello y Villarino were invited to the first hearing of the NSW Artificial Intelligence Inquiry at Parliament House in Canberra, to present evidence from a recent research report on the use of automated decision-making (ADM) systems by state and local governments in NSW.
In a partnership with the New South Wales Ombudsman, this research was the first attempt to undertake a systematic mapping of ADM in any jurisdiction in Australia and one of the very few attempts across the world.
This research is expected to impact the future deployment of AI and automation.
This debate was held as part of the 2023 ADM+AS Web Search Revolution Symposium on 17 August at RMIT University, and online.A lively debate on the implications of Generative AI and its societal impact. Featuring experts in the field, this debate will shed light on the serious hazards and enormous potential of Generative AI. The affirmative side will argue that we must stop progress in this technology and focus on minimising its harms and render it safe. The negative will emphasise the importance of integrating this Promethean Gift into every corner of our lives.Speakers:A/Prof Chris Berg, RMIT University (moderator)Prof Chirag Shah, University of Washington (affirmative)Dr Jana Schmitz, .au domain (affirmative)Prof Jason Potts, RMIT University (affirmative)Dr Rachel Bailes, Australian Information Industry Association (negative) Prof Sinclair Davidson, RMIT University (negative)Dr Aaron Lane, Lawyer, Supreme Court of Victoria and RMIT University (negative)
This panel was held at the 2023 ADM+S Web Search Revolution Symposium on 17 August at RMIT University, and online. How did search engines develop over the 20th century? Mark Sanderson and Julian Thomas will show how expensive subscription-based search companies formed in the 1960s and largely unchanged over three decades were wiped out by web search that was free, fast, and easy to use, drawing connections between this revolution of the past and the current generative AI revolution.Speakers:Prof Lisa Given, RMIT University (chair)Prof Mark Sanderson, RMIT UniversityProf Julian Thomas, RMIT University
This panel was held at the 2023 ADM+S Web Search Revolution Symposium on 17 August at RMIT University, and online.Although generative AI – and tools like ChatGPT – show that the future of search will certainly be complex, this panel will engage in longer-term stargazing to examine what the reality of search may be in 25-30 years. Through an interactive discussion format, our experts will imagine how people will find and share information, how our workplaces may change, whether dozens of phone apps will continue to define search, and who might own and control these tools and the data they contain. Come along on the journey as we look ahead to the next generation of search.Speakers:Prof Lisa Given, RMIT University (chair)Prof Guido Zuccon, University of QueenslandPeter Bailey, CanvaDr Johanne Trippas, RMIT UniversityProf Jason Potts, RMIT University
This panel was held at the 2023 ADM+S Web Search Revolution Symposium on 17 August at RMIT University, and online. With billions of queries serviced every day, web search has profoundly reshaped the way we relate to information. But search has itself been reshaped by law, regulation, markets, user interactions, and other social forces. This panel asks: how can we understand the historical evolution of search from a social perspective? What has search done to us, and what have we done to search? And how can future search systems be designed to avoid some of the mistakes made in the past?Speakers, Assoc Prof Ramon Lobato, RMIT University (chair)Louisa Bartolo, Queensland University of TechnologyProf Dan Angus, Queensland University of TechnologyProf Kimberlee Weatherall, University of SydneyProf Alistair Moffat, University of Melbourne
This keynote presentation was part of the 2023 ADM+S Web Search Revolution Symposium on 17 August at RMIT University, and online.What did web search replace? What are the origins of web search and how it has evolved in the last 2-3 decades? A look at the history and impact of search and a look forward to where we are going – including neural methods which have been used in web search for a while and chat. The talk will focus more on people and their interactions with search systems, helping them articulate their needs and making sense of results and less about the technical details of the systems themselves.Speaker:Susan Dumais, Technical Fellow & Managing Director, Microsoft Research New England, New York City and Montreal
This keynote presentation was part of the 2023 ADM+S Web Search Revolution Symposium on 17 August at RMIT University, and online.The prominent model of retrieving, evaluating, and using relevant information from databases, collections, and the web is going through a significant transformation. This is largely due to wide-scale availability of various generative AI systems that can take in natural language inputs and generate highly customized natural language text or images and even videos. This transformation in progress will have profound impacts on users, developers, and policy makers. It is already changing many sectors including education, health, and commerce. In this talk, I will highlight some of the opportunities and challenges for information access stemming from recent advancements in generative AI. I will bring up frequently asked questions about impacts of these technologies on pedagogy, jobs, economy, policies, and democracy. The goal here is to cut through both hype and fear and think pragmatically about the future of information access.Speaker:Chirag Shah, Professor of Information and Computer Science, University of Washington
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
From claims that generative AI tools democratise creativity by making production ‘radically accessible’, critical implications for authorship, intellectual property, craft, and possibilities for opting out, to how the institutions of art are responding to these developments in the context of their own organisational logics, objectives and economic conditions, this panel considers the dynamics currently underpinning automation in art and asks where to next?
Speakers:
Dr Indigo Holcombe-James, ACMI
Dr Joel Stern, RMIT University
Amalia Lindo, Monash University
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
In this episode, panelists discuss the Australian Ad Observatory project and present early findings from their ad analysis, by focussing on three case studies: greenwashing, gambling and alcohol.
Speakers:
Assoc Prof Nicholas Carah, University of Queensland
Lauren Hayden, University of Queensland
Dr Cesar Albarran-Torres, Swinburne University
Prof Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology
Charmaine Griffith, VMLY&R
Jonas Jaanimagi, Interactive Advertising Bureau
Prof Christine Parker, University of Melbourne
Richard Warwick, CustomMedia
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss the actual vs perceived capabilities of AI systems, their potential to disrupt vs their capacity to maintain power dynamics, and the real vs imagined threats and challenges of automation in the media landscape.
Speakers:
Dr Thao Phan, Monash University
Jeni Lee, Monash University
Lauren Kelly, RMIT University
Michael Lucy, The Conversation
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
In this presentation titled 'Introducing Communicative AI', Prof Loosen from Hans Bredow Institute considers what it means to think about AI as a form of communication, working with and further developing the concept ‘Communicative AI’, and illustrates the breadth and depth of this phenomenon through a series of case studies from the journalism sector.
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
In this presentation titled 'A New Thing Under the Sun? Alternative Visions for Tech in the Age of AI', Tattle co-founder Tarunima Prabhakar argues for a deeper engagement of theory with practice to inform critiques of ‘big tech’, and the proposed agenda for change.
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists introduce the Australian Search Experience project, and discuss the long-term implications for future research that have arisen as a result of the study.
Speakers:
Prof Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Abdul Obeid, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez, Queensland University of Technology
Dr James Meese, RMIT University
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss how news companies have started to focus on personalising content for readers, from simply allowing people to select topics of interest, to constructing deeply automated websites that present each reader with an individualised front page.
Speakers:
Dr James Meese, RMIT University
Prof Lisa Waller, RMIT University
Prof Terry Flew, University of Sydney
Prof Sora Park, University of Canberra
Dave Earley, The Guardian Australia
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists reflect on existing legal and regulatory commitments across news and media, discuss new reforms, and consider whether automation actually requires a new regulatory agenda.
Speakers:
Prof Kim Weatherall, University of Sydney
Dr Joanne Gray, University of Sydney
Prof Andrew Kenyon, University of Melbourne
Bill Simpson-Young, Gradient Institute
David Abkiewicz, ACCC
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
This panel of AI researchers, ethicists, and industry leaders discuss open problems and ethical dilemmas including responsible prompt engineering of Gen AI.
Speakers:
Prof Flora Salim, UNSW
Dr Hao Xue, UNSW
Prof Tomasz Bednarz, NVIDIA
Morgan Dutton, Amazon Web Services
Rebecca Johnson, University of Sydney
Joon Sung Park, Stanford University
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists provide a brief introduction of AI applications in China’s newsrooms and on social media platforms, and discuss the role of AIGC in content creation/production, circulation, and governance/moderation in the Chinese context.
Speakers:
Prof Mark Andrejevic, Monash University
Dr Dang Nguyen, RMIT University
Prof Heather Horst, Western Sydney University
Assoc Prof Adrian Athique, University of Queensland
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists address rapid developments in internet infrastructures and AI technologies, and discuss questions around the dynamic possibilities and uncertain pathways these developments present for internet governance, social media platforms, media industries, and digital inclusion.
Speakers:
Prof Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Gareth Downing, ACCAN
Craig McCosker, ABC
Prof Ellie Rennie, RMIT University
Prof Flora Salim, UNSW
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss the opportunities and shortcomings of designing and interacting with voice news assistants and news chatbots, and the bright and dark sides of the news chatbot ecologies.
Speakers:
Dr Silvia Montaña-Niño, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Jonathon Hutchinson, University of Sydney
Craig McCosker, ABC
Dr Damiano Spina, RMIT University
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss how algorithmic assistance may be beneficial for fact checkers to assist in the misinformation management process, without taking away agency from experts.
Speaker:
Dr Damiano Spina, RMIT University
Dr Danula Hettiachchi, RMIT University
Dr Anne Kruger, RMIT FactLab & RMIT FactLab CrossCheck
Devi Mallal, RMIT FactLab & RMIT FactLab CrossCheck
Dr Michelle Riedlinger, Queensland University of Technology
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists examine how Facial recognition technology is being used and where; how it intersects with institutions, laws, economies - and what we can do about it.
Speakers:
Prof Kim Weatherall, University of Sydney
Dr Jake Goldenfein, University of Melbourne
Prof Edward Santow, Human Technology Institute
Dr Kate Bower, Choice
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss why Addressing themes ranging from social media algorithms to remote sensing technologies to the practicalities of newsroom photo editing, this panel conversations explores new ways of seeing news events and what they mean for practitioners, researchers, and publics.
Speakers:
Assoc Prof Michael Richardson, UNSW
Dr Olga Boichak, University of Sydney
Assoc Prof Timothy Graham, Queensland University of Technology
Nick Moir, Sydney Morning Herald
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists examine the politics and practicalities of discoverability and interface design across streaming services, smart TVs, and public-service media.
Speakers:
Assoc Prof Ramon Lobato, RMIT University
Dr Kylie Pappalardo, Queensland University of Technology
Louisa Bartolo, Queensland University of Technology
Alex Hay, ABC
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss the nuances and specificities of online misogyny and its derived harms within a context of emerging online safety regulation in many countries around the world, and address the practical opportunities and limitations of automation to identify and moderate harmful content without silencing women and counterspeech.
Speakers:
Dr Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Aaron Snoswell, Queensland University of Technology
Lucinda Nelson, Queensland University of Technology
Joanna Williams, Swinburne University
Rita Jabri Markwell, Australian Muslim Advocacy Network
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
This panel discussion took place at the 2023 ADMS+S Automated News and Media Symposium, 13-14 July 2023 at the University of Sydney.
Panelists discuss ongoing and emerging challenges of engaging with automated systems, where accessing information and entertainment is increasingly fraught for people who are already digitally excluded.
Speakers:
Dr Jenny Kennedy, RMIT University
Dr Justine Humphry, University of Sydney
Assoc Prof Tanya Notley, Western Sydney University
Dr Lyndal Sleep, Central Queensland University
Learn more about the 2023 Symposium: admscentre.org/ADMS2023
Watch session recordings on Youtube: admscentre.org/2023-symposium-recordings
In this episode, Prof Deborah Lupton and Dr Vaughan Wozniak-O'Connor from the University of News South Wales discuss the process of their interdisciplinary collaboration in putting together the 'More-Than-Human Wellbeing' exhibition, as a research translation and community engagement initiative.
They discuss the process and thinking behind making the exhibition, barriers they encountered, and tips for other researchers wishing to engage broader audiences through arts-based methods.
The More-Than-Human Wellbeing' exhibition will be on show at the UNSW library until 18 August 2023.
Find out more: www.admscentre.org.au/event/more-than-human-wellbeing/
This presentation by Ausma Bernot titled 'Queer Social Sorting - Control and resistance in China’s LGBTQ+ activism,' was held at the ADM+S Centre at RMIT University and livestreamed online on Tuesday 16 May 2023.Since 2013, LGBTQ+ activism in China has been progressively hampered by sophisticated queer social sorting methods that include both automated decision-making and the use of human labour in enforcing queer “othering”. On the surface, China’s authorities maintain formal decorum and formulaic support for LGBTQ+ communities. Non-discrimination can be argued on the basis of formal UN announcements confirming China's stance against LGBTQ+ discrimination as well as the gradual thawing of national laws that restrict LGBTQ+ communities, such as the recent 2022 regulations lowering the minimum age requirements for gender affirming surgery from 20 to 18. Concurrently, suppression of LGBTQ+ activism exists under the surface of international and national political decorum. The state-sponsored control of queer activism is now increasingly linked to two elements: China’s call to return to traditional gender roles and social sorting of queer activism. Queer social sorting is achieved through an interconnected means of the legal and regulatory frames, public and state security monitoring and harassment, and digital surveillance. This chapter unpacks the web of those practices with a particular focus on inclusion of automated decision-making and the power dynamics they entrench.Author bio:Ausma Bernot is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Charles Sturt University. Along with Prof Patrick F Walsh, Ausma is working to advance national intelligence capabilities in responding to health threats. She has six years of work experience with forensic science and research organisations across the globe, in particular China, where she had the chance to gain insights on how technologies are governed at provincial and national levels. Being fluent in Mandarin and building on existing networks in China, Ausma has used primary and secondary sources to research both surveillance technology development and governance in the country.
The dazzling promises of AI systems to augment humans in various tasks hinge on whether humans can appropriately rely on them. Recent research has shown that appropriate reliance is the key to achieving complementary team performance in AI-assisted decision making. Accurately estimating the trustworthiness of AI advice at the instance level is quite challenging, especially in the absence of performance feedback about the AI system. Moreover, the performance disparity of underlying machine learning models on out-of-distribution data makes the dataset-specific performance feedback unreliable in human-AI collaboration. Through a series of empirical studies operationalising real-world decision making contexts, we systematically explored the role of explanations, cognitive biases, critical mindsets, and users' affinity to technology in shaping their reliance on AI systems and the overall task outcomes.
In a talk held on 24 March 2023 at RMIT University, Assistant Professor Ujwal Gadiraju from Delft University of Technology shares novel insights into why appropriate reliance is a non-trivial objective.
Dr Aaron Snoswell presented ChatGPT: Hype or the Next Big Thing? At the Hacks/Hackers Brisbane event held 22 March 2023. In this presentation, Aaron talks about the hype, the limitations, and the potential of large language models like ChatGPT. Are we stuck in another iteration of the ‘hype cycle’, or are these systems actually a step closer to a useful and general artificial intelligence?
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
Chair: Haiqing Yu, RMIT University and Dev Lewis, Digital Asia Hub
Panellists:
Shawn Wu, SeeDAO
KC Chen, SeeDAO
Jenks Guo, FileCoin
James Kang, Crypto Enthusiast
Discussants:
Ellie Rennie, RMIT University
Kaitlin Beegle, FileCoin
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
Mark Andrejevic from Monash University presents 'Seeing Like a Border Securing Circulation During COVID and Beyond.'
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
Malavika Jayaram from Digital Asia Hub, presents 'Disappearing from Happiness Street, and other tales of magic and wonder'.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
Xin Dai from Peking University presents 'Locating and Localizing ADM Failures in China.'
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This session included the following presentations:
Xin Gu, Monash University:
De-construct Chinese Facial Recognition Technology Discourse.
Hailing Zhao, Aalborg University, Tingting Liu, Jinan University, Guangzhou:
Coping with Digital Blacklisting in (Non)identical Ways: An ethnographic study of the untrustworthy in China.
Fan Liang, Duke Kushan University, Haiyun Zhou, University of Cambridge:
Automated Reduction? The Practices and Imaginaries of Content Moderation on Chinese Short-video Platforms.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This session included the following presentations:
Jian Xu, Deakin University, Terry Flew, University of Sydney:
Governing the Algorithmic Distribution of News in China: The case of Jinri Toutiao.
Yu Shan and Michael Keane, Queensland University of Technology:
Automated Decision-Making Society in China: Or all watched over by machines of loving Grace?
Gianluigi Negro, University of Siena:
Nationalising the Metaverse in China. The case of Qian Xuesen.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This podcast includes the following presentations:
Warwick Powell, University of Queensland, Shoufeng Cao, University of Queensland:
Automated Decision-Making in Cross-Border Trade with China: Exploring the opportunity of federated Multisig deal transaction smart contracts to streamline payments.
Lin Tian and Xiuzhen Zhang, RMIT University:
Contrastive Analysis of Covid-19 health misinformation within online Chinese-language communities.
Wynston Lee, RMIT University, Guangnan Zhu, Queensland University of Technology:
Mapping the (Automated) Data Assemblages of China's Social Credit System.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This podcast includes the following presentations:
H C Steinhardt and Christian Göbel, University of Vienna:
Mobilising Social Anomie to strengthen the state: Justification Strategies for 'Social Credit' on Sina Weibo.
Anne-Christine Trémon, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris:
Scientific Fairness: Experimentation and critique of points systems in Shenzhen.
Alexander Trauth-Goik, University of Vienna, Philipp Immel, University of Wurzburg:
"My credit score ought to surpass 90% of people": A qualitative analysis of citizen interpretations and engagements with state, commercial and peer-to-peer forms of surveillance in China.
Lena Wassermann and Theresa Krause, University of Wurzburg:
The impact of the SCS on foreign companies using the case of German firms.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This session included the following presentations:
Adam Knight, Leiden Institute:
Automating Revolution: Operational Research and the Origins of Automated Decision-Making in 1950's China.
Xiang Gao, Zhejiang University:
Automated-Decision Making, Bureaucratisation and centralisation: The rise of China's digital administrative state.
Warwick Powell, Queensland University of Technology:
Dialogue and Democracy: Policing and Algorithms. Alternative perspectives on digitised life-worlds and governmentally with Chinese characteristics.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This podcast includes the following presentations:
Marianne von Blomberg and Bjorn Ahl, University of Cologne:
Debating the Legality of "Credit based Regulation" in China - A review of Chinese legal scholarship.
Cheris Shun-ting Chen, University of Hong Kong:
Making it a Habit: Instituting Social Credit Systems in Rural China.
Yu Sun, University of Glasgow, Wilfred Wang, University of Melbourne, and Linlin Li, Zhejiang University:
Automating moral governance: a case study of data scoring systems in rural China.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This podcast includes the following presentations:
Yu Hong, Zhejiang University, Yiran Wei, Hong Kong Baptist University:
The Making of a City Brain: How traditional media become the sociotechnical gateway for technopolitical disagreement.
Han Tao, University of Sussex:
In Credit we Trust? Banks, 'Packaging Agencies' and the Promise of Digital Lending to Small Businesses.
Haili Li and Genia Kostka, Freie University of Berlin:
Grey Digital Divide and Digital Inclusion in China.
This recording is from the International Conference on Automated Decision-Making and Chinese Societies at RMIT University on 1-3 February 2022.
This podcast includes the following presentations:
Haemin Jee, U.S. Military Academy:
Credit for compliance: How Institutional Layering Ensures Compliance in China.
Fan Yang, University of Cologne:
Strengthening Efficiency, Consistency and Supervision: Provincial Pilots of Judicial AI and Big Data in China.
Yiran Li, Hong Kong Baptist University:
Making Governance Agile: Exploring the Role of Artificial Intelligence in China's local governance.
This discussion took place at the 2022 Future Automated Mobilities Symposium, held at RMIT University 20-21 October.
This session shines the spotlight on the groundbreaking interdisciplinary academic and industry initiatives, research and collaboration being undertaken in Sweden - across three key organisations - the automotive company Volvo Cars, Halmstad University’s interdisciplinary research team, and Drive Sweden - one of the Swedish Government’s Strategic Innovation.
Prof Sarah Pink, Monash University (chair)
Dr Magnus Bergquist, Halmstad University
Professor Vaike Fors, Halmstad University and Drive Sweden
Malin Labecker, Volvo Cars
This discussion took place at the 2022 Future Automated Mobilities Symposium, held at RMIT University 20-21 October.
What do future automated mobilities look like from the perspectives of different stakeholders across industry, public sector, academic and government funded initiatives? Our panellists explore how these organisations and sectors have successfully collaborated, and we ask how we might achieve future fair, trusted and safe interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder automated mobilities?
Speakers:
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash University (Chair)
Ishra Bakesh, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads
Ian Christenson, iMove
Professor Vaike Fors, Halmstad University and Drive Sweden
Malin Labecker, Volvo Cars
Thomas Lindgren, Volvo Cars and Halmstad University
This discussion took place at the 2022 Future Automated Mobilities Symposium, held at RMIT University 20-21 October.
How do we research, design and create interventions towards fair, trusted and safe future automated mobilities? What new research methods and techniques are available, and how might they be harnessed for interdisciplinary and engaged research and impact? Our world renowned methodologists will discuss these
issues from social and computer science perspectives.
Speakers:
Dr Debora Lanzeni, Monash University (Chair)
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash University
Professor Noortje Marres, University of Warwick
Professor Daniele Quercia, Nokia Bell Labs Cambridge, King’s College London
Professor Flora Salim, University of New South Wales
This discussion took place at the 2022 Future Automated Mobilities Symposium, held at RMIT University 20-21 October.
Our interdisciplinary panellists from academia and industry will discuss some key issues around the usage of mobility data in designing automated decision-making systems in the transport domain. How has this data been used for good, and good for whom? What are some of the principles we need to stick to?
Speakers:
Professor Flora Salim, University of New South Wales (Chair)
Mandi Mees, National Transport Commission
Professor Daniele Quercia, Nokia Bell Labs Cambridge, King’s College London
Professor Andry Rakotonirainy, Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety (CARRS-Q), Queensland University of Technology
This discussion took place at the 2022 Future Automated Mobilities Symposium, held at RMIT University 20-21 October.
Inclusive design is a necessary element of future automated mobilities systems and technologies. Our panellists will explore the benefits of inclusive design of automated mobilities starting in the lives of people and physical sites where disability is lived and experienced. We will ask what the consequences will be if we do not do so?
Speakers:
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash University (Chair)
Professor Gerard Goggin, University of Sydney
Iris Maher, Monash University
Helen Lindner, MACA
Orhan Karagoz, University of Melbourne
This discussion took place at the 2022 Future Automated Mobilities Symposium, held at RMIT University 20-21 October.
Disaster response, precision agriculture, border control, military logistics, and urban delivery all imagine different aerial futures, but each also depends on the transformation of air into skyways. This panel brings together experts on drones, remote sensing, and autonomous technologies to raise vital provocations about the future of the skies above us.
Speakers
Associate Professor Michael Richardson, University of New South Wales (Chair)
Associate Professor Julia Powles, UWA
Associate Professor Christine Agius, Swinburne University of Technology
Dr Tim Neale, Deakin University
In this workshop, Professor Deborah Lupton (author/co-author of 20 books and editor/co-editor of a further ten volumes) provides guidelines and advice on how to write a book proposal to achieve a publishing contract. Deborah discusses how to develop an idea for a book, what content should be in the proposal, and how best to scope publishers to approach. Throughout the presentation participants engaged in an online Q&A, to which Deborah actively responds to, as she presents.
Deborah's blog: https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2022/11/07/how-to-write-an-academic-book-proposal-tips-for-securing-a-contract/
Advertising is becoming harder than ever before to hold accountable, which raises important concerns about the legacy of abuses that have characterised the industry. Predatory advertising, discrimination, and the circulation of false and harmful messaging are harder to detect and regulate online because there is no public archive of online ads. The Australian Ad Observatory provides one model for enlisting citizens to help provide transparency for online advertising.
In this episode, the ADM+S Australian Ad Observatory team and two panels of experts discuss the issues raised by online advertising and how we might address them.
Our first panel includes representatives from the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, consumer advocacy group CHOICE, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), and the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC).
Our second panel includes representatives from the research team at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S), the ABC and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.
You can watch the full recording of this event on our YouTube channel: admscentre.org/youtube
Humans have long defined, framed, and designed bots with the primary aim of passing as human and our collection imagination of what bots can do is often restrained by this focus. The question arising from this strong tendency, is whether humans are capable of imagining bots in another capacity. What is the purpose of designing bots that imitate humans, and could bots offer far more?
Professor Daniel Angus chats with Dominique Carlon about the role of bots in society and how we may recognise that bots can perform interesting and diverse roles without the need to blur the line between bot and human. Dominique shares her research on the life stories of bots in Reddit’s platform culture in particular the role of Dad Bots on Reddit.
Automated transport and mobility services have the potential to transform how we live and move. They offer new opportunities to address entrenched inequalities of access to mobility, relating to disability, age, economic status and location.
However, to achieve these possibilities, the development of new technical capacities and data systems needs to be harnessed for the design of future transport and mobility services that fulfil the needs of people and social institutions.
In this episode, Professor Daniel Angus sits down with Professor Sarah Pink and Professor Flora Salim, co-leads of the ADM+S Centre's Transport and Mobilities Focus Area, to discuss the real experienced limitations, flaws and inequities in automated transport and mobilities systems and technologies of the present, as well as possibilities for ADM systems to take us forward into trusted, fair and safe futures.
Learn more about ADM in Transport and Mobilities at the Future Automated Mobilities Symposium: Towards hope, justice and care on 20- 21 October 2022: admscentre.org.au/fam2022
This panel investigates the dynamic interplay between: discourses framing digital technologies as solutions to the climate crisis and the real material impacts of these technologies on ecologies of living.
Panellists will examine the potential efficacy of digital tech, interrogate its underlying ethics and critically analyse its social, political and ecological dynamics through addressing the following questions: Will digital technologies solve the climate crisis? Can they do it? How are digital technologies placed in the mix of policy efforts and engineering solutions to ecological problems? How do ecological problems create a platform for the development of emerging technologies? How does digital capitalism use contexts of social and ecological crises to boost extractivist activities at the heart of the data economy? How do entrepreneurial cultures and narratives on technology influence public understandings of both the climate crisis and the political and democratic governance of ecological justice? How does digital technology fit with calls for more local knowledge, care and collective practices in relation to ecological problems?
Speakers will analyse how buzzwords (e.g. Green AI, smart grids) recently emerged to shape the public understandings of technology's material impacts and how climate change is often reduced to a technical problem infused by a culture of “toxic” masculinity. The marketisation of emerging technologies such as AI products for disaster monitoring, distributed renewable energy technologies and smart home devices will be analysed and their solution oriented narratives evaluated. Panellists will also envision the benefits and trade-offs coming with the standardisation of AI ethics, the participation of publics in shaping technological change and care-full justice approaches to our everyday environments and non-human.
Speakers:
Dr Loup Cellard, Professor Fiona Haines, University of Melbourne
Dr Ben Lyal, Monash University
Associate Professor Yolande Strengers, Monash University
Professor Karen Yeung, Birmingham Law School (Host)
Streaming media and entertainment platforms like Spotify, YouTube, TikTok and Netflix rely on recommender systems to curate and present selected items from their vast libraries of content. These recommender systems draw on data associated with individual consumption activities and preferences, bespoke cultural categories, and licensing or advertising deals, and are baked into the platforms’ operations and business models. For example, Spotify automatically curates personalised playlists like Discover Weekly for each user, TikTok’s ‘for you page’ automatically cues up and plays a stream of algorithmically curated videos, YouTube suggests (and automatically plays) what’s ‘up next’ in each user’s queue, and the home screens of some smart TVs display menus of titles drawn from all the device’s installed streaming video apps, customising these already- personalised suggestions for the logged-in user.
These developments are said to have transformed our cultural environment, so that platforms exert new forms of cultural authority, displacing the ranking and evaluation functions of older media and cultural institutions, and reshaping how content creators reach and connect with their audiences. This panel considers this question of ‘algorithmic culture’ (Striphas, 2015), and the extent to which it departs from or simply recasts issues that have historically been associated with media distribution, popular consumption, and cultural value. The panel also considers challenges for updating Australia’s existing media policy frameworks. How, for example, do Australian content quotas translate to transnational platforms? How can we, and to what extent should we, ensure that Australians continue to experience diverse cultures and ideas in a personalised media environment?
This panel will bring together internationally recognised experts and industry participants to discuss these important issues around cultural authority and value in the context of everyday consumption practices.
Speakers:
Joel Brydon, ABC iView
Professor Jean Burgess, Queensland University of Technology (Host)
Dr Robbie Fordyce, Monash University
Matthew Hancock, SBS on Demand
Dr Danula Hettiachchi, RMIT University
Associate Professor Ramon Lobato, RMIT University
Dr Adriana Matamoros- Fernandez, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Kylie Pappalardo, Queensland University of Technology
Sextech – a space that encompasses dating apps, sexual entertainment platforms and services, networked sex toys, and AI- powered sex robots - has emerged as a site in which sexual pleasure, wellbeing and health are increasingly understood as data. Many sextech products collect significant amounts of intimate data about people’s sexual preferences, sexual behaviour and sexual health, which is both volunteered through user profiles and self-tracking platforms, and detected via sensors in smart sex toys. To date, most sextech has been developed by start-ups or by private enterprise. But is it possible to design and govern ethical sex tech at scale? Can sexbots consent? What happens when you ‘hack’ sextech? And what does community-led, public interest sextech look like? This panel offers insights and provocations from emerging ADM+S researchers whose work explores the challenges – and ethical potential - of focusing on sextech through the lenses of design justice and public interest. It draws on our recent experiences of participatory research with technologists, sexologists, designers and educators at the ADM+S Sextech Hackathon (supported by Thoughtworks and SexTech School).
Speakers:
Professor Kath Albury, Swinburne University of Technology (Host)
Dr Jacinthe Flore, RMIT University
Dr Jenny Kennedy, RMIT University
Anna Shimshak, Monash University
Dr Zahra Stardust, Queensland University of Technology
Why does trust matter in our relations with automated systems and technologies? What are the risks of not attending to it? And what do we stand to gain by putting it at the centre of our research and practice? Questions of trust seem to be at the core of concerns about the design, application and our lives with automated decision-making. Engineers and technology designers seek to create automated technologies that are inherently trustworthy. Governments need people to trust automation to enable policy. Business consultancy firms and tech companies have set up Trust Centres, administer surveys to monitor public trust and advise on how to gain the trust of consumers and other organisations. Humanitarian organisations put trust at the core of their work. But do people trust ADM systems and technologies? Is there really a new trust deficit related to increased automation? Who can we trust? What does trustworthiness mean in an automating society? And are the right investments being made to support us on a journey towards a society characterised by trust? This panel, led and hosted by Professor Sarah Pink who leads the ADM+S Trust in ADM project, brings together experts to discuss why trust matters.
Speakers:
Professor Kath Albury, Swinburne University of Technology
Professor Nicole Gillespie, University of Queensland
Lizzie O’Shea, Digital Rights Watch
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash University (Host)
Dr Emma Quilty, Monash University Amanda Robinson, Humanitech
Speakers:
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash University (host)
Jeni Lee, Monash University
Dr Emma Quilty, Monash University
Orhan Karagoz, University of Melbourne
Brenton Lillecrapp - Darren Moyle, Vision Australia
Micaela Schmidt
As society becomes increasingly datafied and platformised, regulators the world over are keen to address unequal bargaining power, and to promote fairer, healthier digital spaces. Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code (NMBC) was one of the first attempts to query the fundamental business model of news media, and it inspired other governments to tackle gatekeepers and structural imbalances. Within the Asia-Pacific region, South Korea and China have launched antitrust investigations across industries. The European Union put forward the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), proposing ex ante regulatory tools that go beyond traditional (ex post) competition/antitrust law. This panel brings together experts from Australia, the European Commission, Korea and China to discuss diverse regulatory approaches, and their implications for innovation and consumer welfare, and the future of digital platforms.
Speakers:
Karen Melchior, European Parliament Member
Malavika Jayaram, Digital Asia Hub (Co-host)
Professor Haksoo Ko, Seoul National University School of Law
Dev Lewis, Digital Asia Hub (Co-host)
Associate Professor James Meese, RMIT University
Professor Haiqing Yu, RMIT University
2022 will be a key year to see where regulatory approaches to Artificial Intelligence will be heading. At this stage, from Brazil to the US and from China to the EU, “risk” is the anchor of the many of these regulatory initiatives whether in hard norms, smart rules or standardisation. This panel will bring four regional perspectives to the discussion to see if these approaches are truly divergent or just different manifestations of a bigger idea – protecting societies from AI-related risk. It will pay particular attention to how countries and jurisdictions, such as Australia, reluctant to make any moves at this stage could be faring in the global regulatory landscape.
Speakers:
Professor Brunessen Bertrand, University of Rennes
Dr José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, University of Sydney (Host)
Maroussia Levesque, Berkman Klein Centre
Barry Wang, University of Sydney
News media businesses and working journalists are increasingly engaging with automated decision-making systems across a variety of different contexts. Recommender systems systematically distribute news to online audiences and novel machine learning systems can produce comprehensible auto-generated articles. News consumption is also changing, with companies sending news updates through chatbots and voice assistants as a means of engaging with audiences. There are concerns that these developments may see robots replacing journalists and unreliable recommender systems preferred over careful human editorial judgment. A more nuanced approach suggests that practical uses of these technologies will ‘augment’ rather than replace human capabilities. In any case, advances in automation pose new challenges for the sector, which is adopting these technologies with varying degrees of commitment.
This panel brings together national and international subject-matter experts and leading practitioners in an attempt to separate hype from reality. The panel will discuss the adoption and deployment of automated decision-making, identify probable futures and flag positive and negative issues likely to emerge. The discussion will help to ground ongoing conversations around the interactions between news media and automated decision-making, setting an agenda for public debate and future research projects.
Speakers:
Nick Evershed, The Guardian
Professor Wiebke Loosen, Hans Bredow Institute
Dr James Meese, RMIT University (Host)
Dr Silvia Montaña-Niño, Queensland University of Technology
Inga Ting, ABC - Professor Haiqing Yu, RMIT University
Digital transformation is an area of strategic importance for humanitarian and community development sectors, and innovative uses of data and technology are helping address humanitarian needs and empower communities. However, these tools and systems can create new forms of intrusion, insecurity and inequality, often at the expense of the most vulnerable people and communities. We need to work collaboratively across sectors and disciplines to understand and address the risks – and make the most of the opportunities.
Speakers:
Professor Mark Andrejevic, Monash University
Dr Magdalena Arias Cubas, Red Cross Red Crescent Global Migration Lab
Professor Anthony McCosker, Swinburne University of Technology
Professor Sarah Pink, Monash University
Amanda Robinson, Humanitech
Nicole Batch, Australian Red Cross
Caitlin McCulloch, Australian Red Cross (Host)
It is now well recognised across multiple disciplines and sectors that Automated Decision Making and Artificial Intelligence need to be built in a way that is fair, non-biased, and equitable. Yet, a major challenge in achieving fair, non-biased and equitable ADM/AI is a diversity of views and confusion about what these terms mean, how they are conceptualised and contextualised and how they might be assessed and measured. This panel session advances the need for inter-disciplinary conversations in order to progress the design and use of ADM/AI. The panel focuses on the concepts of fairness, bias, and equity from different disciplinary perspectives, with some consideration of empirical research on the operationalisation and challenges within different sectors/contexts. Following input from and dialogue with panellists with legal, computer science, policy, and social scientific perspectives of fairness, bias and equity, attendees will have the opportunity to work in small groups to develop a definitional delineation of these concepts and how they might be practically applied.
Speakers: Associate Professor Jeffrey Chan, RMIT University
Professor Paul Henman, University of Queensland (Host)
Rakesh Kumar, University of New South Wales Professor
Jackie Leach Scully, University of New South Wales
Professor Jeannie Paterson, University of Melbourne
Dr Emmanuelle Walkowiak, La Trobe University
Dr Scarlet Wilcock, University of Sydney
This panel will feature presentations on the following topics:
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What is a DAO? And why should we care about automated coordination mechanisms?
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If it looks like you’re doing the work, then you’ve done the work, right?
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Unpacking contribution and reward systems in DAOs - DAOs in practice: Governance of and by algorithms
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How are DAOs viewed in the eyes of the law? Are they just another type of company?
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A case study on TracerDAO
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Are we better off in the long run? The economics of DAOs.
Speakers:
Dr Darcy Allen, RMIT University
Jack Deeb, Mycelium/TracerDAO
Kelsie Nabben, RMIT University
Joni Pirovich, Blockchain & Digital Assets
Professor Jason Potts, RMIT University
Professor Ellie Rennie, RMIT University (Host)
Digital technologies are increasingly entering into diverse spaces of care: from home and health and disability care settings to social services to the management and control of global crises such as COVID-19 and climate change by government and industry bodies. Contributors to this panel explore understandings and sociomaterialities of care as it is conceptualised, carried out, experienced and problematised through emerging automated technologies.
ADM is entrusted with consequential decisions in all walks of life. The have the capacity to cause considerable harm as well as good. For example, embodied robots and self-driving vehicles may cause physical harm or property damage; while faulty or biased disembodied systems, such as credit scoring and job recruitment tools, are capable of seriously and unjustly curtailing life opportunities, especially for vulnerable groups. Civil liability laws (and insurance regimes built upon them) are one important mechanism for: - Compensating those who are harmed by poorly designed or deployed ADM; - Incentivising safer and more responsible practice on the part of developers and deployers; and - Promoting efficient and just allocations of risk and cost in relation to ADM harms. This panel, moderated by José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, will explore the opportunities and challenges for applying civil liability laws to ADM- related harms. The intention of the panel is to provide a global, comparative perspective both on challenges and actual or potential approaches to overcoming them.
Speakers:
Associate Professor Henrique Sousa Antunes, Lisbon School of Law
Dr José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, University of Sydney (Host)
Dr Henry Fraser, Queensland University of Technology
Associate Professor John Morgan, University of New South Wales
Natalie Sheard, La Trobe University
Globally, the e-commerce sector has boomed over the last couple years, benefitting greatly from social reshaping by the pandemic. The ascendency of Amazon – and its aggressive entrance into Australia – has been at the centre of much public attention. This panel, based on an ADM+S Seed Fund project, expands the critical analysis of e- commerce. Rather than universalize the Amazon model, our original empirical and theoretical research shows how warehouses contain a much greater diversity of techno-managerial systems for governing labour and logistics in e-commerce. Join ADM+S researchers, Jathan Sadowski and Lauren Kelly, and senior principal engineer at Intel, Melissa Gregg, for a discussion on the systems that underpin modern society: labour, logistics, and technology.
Speakers:
Dr Melissa Gregg, Intel
Lauren Kelly, RMIT University
Dr Jathan Sadowski, Monash University (Host)
Artificial intelligence (AI) has probably already made decisions about your life. Platforms use AI and other forms of automation to recommend music for you to listen to on Spotify, to personalise your news feed, and recommend things to buy on Facebook. AI and automated decision-making are also being used across society to solve problems as diverse as improving social services, creating more efficient transport, and providing greater access to healthcare. AI and automation are changing the way we live, and if AI hasn't already made a decision that affects you, it almost certainly will, whether that be shaping what you see on social media, providing better disease diagnosis, or detecting if you are driving safely. This panel will bring together internationally recognised experts and industry participants to discuss the opportunities of Automated Societies and explore the question: what do we need to know?
Speakers:
Dr Jenney Kennedy, RMIT University (chair)
Kate Bower, CHOICE
Dr Melissa Gregg, Intel
Penny Harrison, Australian Red Cross
Malavika Jayaram, Digital Asia Hub Professor
Anthony McCosker, Swinburne University of Technology
Keynote titled: The Ecological Impact of an Automated Society
This talk provides an introduction to the energy and ecological costs that are growing alongside the deployment of AI in society, from the individual choices made by technology consumers to the challenges involved in managing workloads in data centers. The current trajectory of AI adoption, including the hype around specific applications of this technology, rarely acknowledges the material pressure on planetary resources to support a fully automated and immersive digital future. This talk draws on my current work setting up Intel’s first Sustainability Office for software in the Office of the CTO to highlight three areas of utmost importance for industry standardization in a volatile climate future: industry-wide tools for measuring and reducing carbon, circular business models to supplement recycling policies for e-waste, and an engineering curriculum informed by humanities principles of equity and social justice.
Keynote title: Ungovernable (Other is not a category, or is it)
States have long sought to make their citizens legible. Big data and automation have accelerated and sharpened the ability of governments to count, categorize and control populations, often aided by the private sector. These attempts at sensemaking tend to break down at the margins, where outliers and exceptions defy attempts at neat social sorting and ordering. These glitches and gaps can be hugely consequential for those whose claims and rights are diminished by invisibility (“If you’re not counted, you don’t count”). Equally, they can protect those who gain agency and safety in liminal spaces, away from the official gaze. By looking at spaces of precarity and contestation, especially in the majority world context, we get a glimpse of the myriad ways in which individuals and collectives resists boxes that neither represent nor empower them, and negotiate the spectrum between inclusion and exclusion, visibility and invisibility.
Keynote title: Operationalising Trustworthy AI Governance: Beyond Motherhood and Apple Pie?
In recent years, ‘AI ethics’ codes have proliferated from a wide variety of sources, ranging from those published by individual tech firms through to collective initiatives from European and international policy-makers, including the EU, UNESCO and the OECD. After years of successful lobbying by Big Tech claiming that voluntary self-regulation via ethical codes of this kind will address public concerns about the unwanted and unwelcome impacts of AI, the tide is beginning to turn. Recent legal proposals issued by European policy-makers indicate that they now recognise that, left to its own devices, the market cannot be relied upon to protect the fundamental values upon which the European project is founded from the potential threats generated by unregulated AI applications. Yet serious challenges arise in converting the noble principles which these proposed laws claim to uphold into on-the-ground practice. Will the adoption of these proposed laws in fact deliver on the noble, aspirational values that are claimed to underpin them? In this keynote, Karen will reflect critically on the proposed conceptual vehicles and regulatory architecture through which those aspirational principles are translated into practice, arguing that there are serious dangers that these well-intentioned legal initiatives will fall far short of their claimed objectives.
Keynote title: Beyond the Platform's Algorithmic Power: Constructing Trust, Control, and Capitol in Worker-Platform, Worker-Client, and Worker-Worker Communicative Relationships.
The controls wielded by crowdwork platforms via algorithmic power and the resulting precarious conditions that these facilitate has been emphasized by scholarly research over recent years. This is matched by theorizing that captures the expressions of agency, resistance and collective organization among workers in ways that simultaneously challenge and reinforce some of these platform controls. One of the understudied aspects in the exploration of platform workers’ lived conditions amid dialectical power relations pertains to workers’ communicative relationships with their clients and other workers. Although the platform’s power emerges in the techno-social control it wields in the trilateral relationship of platform, workers, and clients, the situated intercultural relationships between workers (often based in the Global South) and their clients (often based in the Global North) and the interpersonal relationships between workers shape a significant dimension of the platform labor conditions and experience.
The AI revolution can seem powerful and unstoppable, extracting data from every aspect of our lives and subjecting us to unprecedented surveillance and control. But at ground level, even the most advanced ‘smart’ technologies are not as all-powerful as either the tech companies or their critics would have us believe.
In this episode, Professor Mark Andrejevic talks with three of the authors of Everyday Data Cultures about how ordinary people are negotiating the datafication of society. They discuss a new theoretical framework for understanding everyday experiences of data and automation established in the book, offering guidance on the ethical responsibilities we share as we learn to live together with data-driven machines.
Professor Mark Andrejevic interviews Professor Jean Burgess, Professor Kath Albury and Professor Anthony McCosker.
(Other author: Associate Professor Rowan Wilken)
This podcast revisits an ADM+S Tech Talk with Prof Milind Tambe, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University and Director of AI for Social Good at Google Research India.
Prof Tambe examines the ways in which AI can improve the social service sector, while touching on the risks associated with its intervention. Drawing on years of experience in the field, Prof Tambe offers insights and expertise on the evolution of AI systems, the improvements and challenges, and case-study examples of the benefits AI can provide as a multiagent system researcher.
The full Tech Talk is available to watch on our Youtube Channel: https://youtu.be/hVX3_y7MkxY
AI-generated deepfakes are becoming more common and harder to spot. They have the potential to create convincing footage of any person doing anything, anywhere.
In this episode, we talk with Professor Anthony McCosker about the educational and social learning responses to deepfakes, and what kind of AI and data literacy might make a difference in addressing deepfakes.
In this episode, Professor Paul Henman from the University of Queensland is joined by Dr Joanna Redden from Western University, Assoc Prof Philip Gilingham from the University of Queensland, Carol Ronken, Director at Bravehearts Australia, and Rhema Vaithianathan from Auckland University of Technology to discuss automated decision-making (ADM) in child and family services.
This episode highlights issues of transparency, regulation, user engagement, and whether ADM is best utilised as an assistive technology in family services, or an autonomous substitute.
Automated decision-making (ADM) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are rapidly expanding into all aspects of our lives, and radically reshaping our experiences of ourselves as well as our relations with one another, governmental entities, and corporations. Often framed as efficient, accurate and objective, these technologies can have widely disparate impacts across populations and societies, often exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, discrimination, and disadvantage.
This episode highlights key insights from an event held in November 2021 with Prof Safiya Noble from UCLA, Prof Bronwyn Carlson from Macquarie University, and Dr Karaitiana Taiuru from the University of Otago, on the intersectionalities of race/ethnicity and ADM.
As we countdown to the election, we're seeing an increase in political advertising, not just on billboards and TV, but also online. It's even crept into online games and Grindr. In this episode we talk to Professor Daniel Angus about the rise of political advertising on social media and the use of micro-targeting to shape political messaging.
If you’ve seen photos of a teapot shaped like an avocado or read a well-written article that veers off on slightly weird tangents, you may have been exposed to a new trend in artificial intelligence (AI). Machine learning systems called DALL-E, GPT and PaLM are making a splash with their incredible ability to generate creative work. In this episode, Dr Aaron Snoswell explains Machine Learning and the recent technical advances in the ability of AI to produce ‘creative’ content like images and text. Foundation models will bring about huge transformations, tey are tightly controlled (for now), so we probably have a little time to understand their implications before they become a huge issue.
In this episode, Dr Jenny Kennedy joins Dr Daniel Featherstone and Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker in conversation about the ADM+S Centre / Telstra research project Mapping the Digital Gap, which is measuring digital inclusion and media use in remote Aboriginal / Torres Strait Islander communities from 2021 to 2024. We also hear from Brendon Adams, site manager at Regional Enterprise Development Institute (REDI.E). REDI.E is a research partner in Wilcannia, one of the project's 12 research sites around the country.
Learn more at https://www.admscentre.org.au/mapping-the-digital-gap/
REDI.E can be found at https://redie.org.au/
The Technology for Society series is a partnership between ADM+S and Humanitech to explore what it means to design and build responsible, ethical, and inclusive frontier technologies. In this inaugural event, the panellists' Professor Julian Thomas, Ivana Jurko and Amanda Robinson explore the need for a cross-sector approach to address the unique social challenges and opportunities emerging from frontier technologies. The panel was moderated by Amal Varghese.
We talk with Professor Kath Albury about her ARC Future Fellowship Award and her research project: Digital and data literacies for sexual health practices. Kath's research will engage young adult users of digital apps and social platforms with sexual health policy-makers and professionals to develop knowledge-translation resources for sexual health professionals.
In this episode, we talk to Professor Dan Angus about his past research developing algorithms inspired by ant behaviours. Dan talks about his career trajectory from computer science to humanities and social science. He talks about how many algorithms that are in common use today are inspired by biological systems. Dan also reflects on his change in perspective on automated decision-making systems to appreciate not only the strengths of these systems but also the potential harms.
Fake followers are commonly used to boost status on social media. But what happens when they are used to influence public opinion. In this episode, we talk to Marcel Schliebs from the Oxford Internet Institute about his report on the Public Republic of China using fake accounts to amplify political opinions on Twitter. We ask whether fake followers really make a difference in boosting messages and how much engagement with these accounts is actually real?
We also talk with Dr Timothy Graham from the ADM+S Centre about his research into the hashtags #DictatorDan and #IStandWithDan.
With billions of topic searches online per day, search algorithms are used to help filter this information, but how much are they filtering? and how does this impact the information we see online? In this episode, we discuss how researchers at ADM+S are tackling this question through the Australian Search Experience project. This episode features Professor Jean Burgess, Dr Verity Trott, Matthias Spielkamp and Abdul Obeid.
When Facebook removed news from it’s pages on 18 February 2021, the company was taking a strong stance against the proposed news media bargaining code. In this podcast we talk to Associate Professor Daniel Angus, Dr James Meese, and Dr Belinda Barnet about the ACCC news media bargaining code, the relationship between news and online platforms Google and Facebook and what we learnt from the news ban.
- [02:16] The Facebook News Ban (Dan Angus)
- [12:18] The ACCC News Media Bargaining Code (James Meese)
- [16:03] Are News Outlets and Facebook Codependant?
- [22:44] Legislation Changes That Ended the News Ban (Belinda Barnet)
On Twitter
Daniel Angus @antmandan | James Meese @meese_james | Belinda Barnet @manjusrii
The media industry has recently faced many changes in the ways that news is gathered, produced and distributed. We talk with Dr Silvia Montaña-Niño about the use of automated decision-making technologies in journalism and the influence of metrics and algorithms on newsgathering, production and distribution.
Follow Silvia Montaña-Niño on Twitter @siximon
Questions about COVID-19 led to numerous conspiracy theories encouraged by celebrities and tabloids. One notable theory was the link between the new 5G cellular network and the virus. We are joined by Professor Axel Bruns, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society to find out how these conspiracy theories seem to spread so easily.
Follow Axel Bruns on Twitter @snurb_dot_info
Show Notes
Telstra's Campaign:
Does 5G Spread Coronavirus
Research article published in Media International Australia:
‘Corona? 5G? or both?’: the dynamics of COVID-19/5G conspiracy theories on Facebook
In news and media, automated and algorithmic decision-making systems are used intensively. They can appear in search engines, personalised newsfeeds, content moderation systems, and programmatic advertising. We talk to Professor Jean Burgess, to understand the impact algorithms are having on our news and media.
Automated Decision-Making promises to make essential services more personal, and to enhance choice and control for citizens and communities. However, its widespread uptake also creates startling new risks of misuse and malfunction. We talk with Professor Julian Thomas about how research at ADM+S aims to support the development of responsible, ethical and inclusive automated decision-making.
Follow Julian Thomas on Twitter @juliant09