Authors  Kathy Nickels
Date 22 September 2023

The rapid rise of generative AI is revolutionising the generation of content, and around the world people are looking to governments to lead the conversation on its regulation.

How should the Australian federal government take action to promote artificial intelligence and automated decision-making that is safe and responsible?

The Minister for Industry and Science Hon Ed Husic has highlighted that the government is committed to a thoughtful approach to the challenges of generative AI while ensuring they also maximise the benefits.

“While AI has been with us for a while and contains great benefits for both individuals and organisations, it’s important we get the balance right on its introduction,” said Hon Ed Husic.

In June 2023, the Australian Government called for public submissions for their discussion paper Supporting Responsible AI. 

The discussion paper builds on the recent Rapid Research Report on Generative AI delivered by the government’s National Science and Technology Council.

Hon Ed Husic provided some details about submissions received in a recent article published in the Australian Financial Review.

He said that more than 500 submissions were received, reflecting the interest and concern people have around regulations of AI.

“Nearly every submission agreed that getting the guardrails right was about more than just creating new laws. It also meant investing in capability building and education, creating standards, and in co-ordinating and upskilling existing regulators and policymakers,” said Hon Ed Husic.

Authors  Kathy Nickels
Date 21 September 2023

Since 2021, the Australian Ad Observatory has collected over 300,000 unique ads. The Observatory represents the largest library of ads collected from the Australian general public. 

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society have been analysing these ads to identify problematic advertising, such as green claims and unhealthy food advertising as well as alcohol and gambling advertising.

Professor Christine Parker from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and Law Professor at the University of Melbourne spoke about the Australian Ad Observatory with host Jaia Guildford-Carey on a recent episode of Hungry Talks.

Professor Parker said that they are interested in what advertising people are seeing on Facebook because a lot of advertising is personalised and targeted. 

Authors  Kathy Nickels
Date 19 September 2023

Online dating apps could be forced to make changes through government legislation unless they lift their standards and improve safety for users.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland announced that popular dating companies such as Tinder, Bumble and Hinge have until June 30 to develop a voluntary code of conduct that addresses user safety concerns.

The code could include improving engagement with law enforcement, supporting at-risk users, improving safety policies and practices, and providing greater transparency about harms, she said.
But, Rowland added, if the safety standards are not sufficiently improved, the government will use regulation and legislation to force change.

The government is responding to Australian Institute of Criminology research published last year that found three-in-four users of dating apps or websites had experienced some form of sexual violence through these platforms in the five years through 2021.

“Online dating is actually the most popular way for Australians to meet new people and to form new relationships,” Rowland said.

“The government is concerned about rates of sexual harassment, abusive and threatening language, unsolicited sexual images and violence facilitated by these platforms,” she added.

Earlier this year, the federal government convened a national rountable that brought representatives from the sector face-to-face with experts, advocates and law enforcement agencies to discuss the situation playing out online.

ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making researcher Professor Kath Albury from Swinburne University studies behaviours on online dating and social media platforms, and said users reported a wide variety of problematic experiences.

“The harms range from receiving unwanted contact or images — unwanted texts and images that maybe are using slurs or sexually explicit when a person hasn’t consented to receiving sexually explicit communication,” Professor Albury said.

Authors  Kathy Nickels
Date 13 September 2023

ADM+S Research Fellow Dr Thao Phan from Monash University will be the featured speaker for the Australian Academy of Humanities 2023 Hancock Lecture. 

Each year, the Australian Academy of Humanities invites an outstanding scholar at the earlier stages of their careers to talk at the Hancock Lecture about their work in an accessible way for the everyday Australian.

In the talk ‘Artificial figures: gender-in-the-making in algorithmic culture’, Dr Phan will explore how, in the making of AI systems and technologies, gender too is being made.

This lecture centres on questions of power, politics, and identity in today’s algorithmic culture. It asks: how are more-than-human systems reconfiguring the terms of all-too-human categories like gender, race, and class? How does gender influence how new technologies are made intelligible, mediating the expectations of a user, consumer, or audience? 

Authors Natalie Campbell
Date 12 September 2023

Congratulations to ADM+S researchers who have been recognised for their creative and innovative contributions to Australian design at the 2023 Australian Good Design Awards.

Established in 1958, the Australian Good Design Awards have been setting the international standard for good design for more than six decades and are recognised by the World Design Organization (WDO) as Australia’s peak international design endorsement program.

Held on 8 September 2023, the annual awards night celebrated projects from around the world in design, architecture, engineering, research, fashion, and social impact. Entries covered a vast range of sectors and industries, showcasing everything from product and building design, systems, and processes that support business and communities.

ADM+S researchers from the Monash Emerging Technologies Research Lab Prof Sarah Pink, Dr Debora Lanzeni, Prof Vaike Fors, Prof Yolande Strengers, and their colleagues Dr Melisa Duque and Assoc Prof Shanti Sumartojo, received a Good Design Award for their book ‘Design Ethnography’.

Design Ethnography presents an ethical, inclusive and interventional design research approach, tailored to the challenges of our world in crisis. The book draws on the shared design ethnographic practice of its six female authors over ten years, with a commitment to engender safe and trusted futures for people, planet, other species and technologies.

Dr Lanzeni explains, “it’s such an honour for our book to have this enormous recognition in the world of design. This methodology traverses disciplines and knowledge environments, aiming to move forward an engaged, committed and innovative mode of research in partnership with stakeholders.

What is essential is to grasp and understand the contemporary challenges that society and the planet are going through.”

Authors Haiqing Yu and Natalie Campbell
Date 11 September 2023

In 2024 the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society will be hosting the 21^st Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC 2024) in Brisbane. The theme of the event is ‘Politics and Geopolitics of Automated Decision-Making on the Global Chinese Internet’ and will be held on 17-18 June.

The Chinese Internet has a unique technological and politico-cultural ecosystem. It is characterized by the Great-Firewall censorship regime, a vibrant platform-centered digital economy, and highly connected and engaged consumers and users. These features are complemented with a fast-paced and dynamic experimentation with intelligent and disruptive technologies across an expanding array of areas, platforms, sectors, and national boundaries. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and blockchain—technologies and digital tools that contribute to automated decision-making (ADM)—are used to innovate digital economy, service provision, transport and mobility, media/propaganda, labor relations, and cross-border trade, and so forth. They also shape societal processes, contributing to new forms of social governance, cultural production and social engagement, resetting labor relations, and transforming power dynamics across industries, sectors, and national boundaries. Chinese Internet and technology companies like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Bytedance are the forerunners in the AI race and technological innovation. They are encouraged by the Chinese Party-state to develop research and innovation capacities in cutting-edge technologies, while bearing the brunt of state regulations on content and data control on the one hand and of the high-tech fallout with the US on the other hand.

The politics of ADM in China impacts on how Chinese people live and work, even after they travel and immigrate to other places. Made-in-China digital companies, born-in-China entrepreneurs, or entities and organizations with Chinese investment or influence look to created-in-China models and tested-in-China protocols for inspiration. However, they face challenging problems across a wide range of areas in social, institutional, cultural, legal and ethical domains, both inside China and beyond. It is especially so when Chinese Internet companies expand overseas and become strategic players in the global Chinese Internet. Together with Chinese players in telecommunications and information services, Chinese Internet companies, entrepreneurs, users, and their associates have found themself embroiled in the geopolitics of digital communication, technology, and governance.

The global Chinese Internet is centered around and complicated by politics and geopolitics. Underpinning the politics and geopolitics of the global Chinese Internet are the new and disruptive ADM technologies and technological systems, which are used in a wide range of scenarios, from consumer profiling to citizen surveillance on- and offline. China’s role in politics and geopolitics concerning AI applications, blockchain operations, data governance, digital surveillance, and automated media, etc., can have significant implications beyond its borders and the Chinese speaking world.

How to make sense of and govern these changes brought about by ADM technologies and systems with Chinese characteristics and how to support the development of a global framework for responsible, ethical, and inclusive ADM continue to be a policy challenge and scholarly interest. The significance of politics and geopolitics of the global Chinese Internet and its role in ADM+S in and outside China makes Chinese Internet research a multidisciplinary subject that is beyond the traditional Internet research and China studies.

CIRC 2024 calls for papers and exhibitions that examine politics and geopolitics of the global Chinese Internet in relation to ADM. It features two major streams: (1) examining ADM in the Chinese context, and (2) situating Chinese ADM in the global context.

CIRC 2024 will be organized and sponsored by ADM+S, Australia’s cross-disciplinary, national Centre of Excellence, which aims to create the knowledge and strategies necessary for responsible, ethical, and inclusive automated decision-making. The conference will be held at the QUT node of ADM+S. It will not only be the first CIRC conference to be held physically in the Southern Hemisphere but also the first in the CIRC history to bring scholars outside the traditional fields and disciplines in China studies and Internet research to engage in meaningful dialogues on topics ranging from Chinese Internet to ADM politics and geopolitics.

Suggested topics include:

Stream 1: Examining ADM in the Chinese Context

• Pre-digital histories of ADM in China
• Conceptual debate on what AI and/or ADM is in China
• The imaginaries of AI and machine in China
• Political economy of Generative AI in China
• Generative AI and the future of education, work, and play in China
• Chinese policies on ADM governance and their politics
• Chinese model for ADM governance: the role of the private sector
• Spatial and local logics of ADM governance and policy making in China.
• Governance and production of machine learning data sets
• AI in social movement and civic activism
• Surveillance regimes and cultures of compliance and deviation
• Cross-sectoral collaboration in ADM industries
• Financialization of ADMs in and beyond China
• Research methods: challenges, innovations, and reflections in studying ADM in China

Stream 2: Situating Chinese ADM in the Global Context

• International policy perspectives in ADM and China
• Decentering Chinese ADM (global perspectives)
• Comparative analysis of China’s governance of ADM and AI vis-a-vis the global context
• The geopolitics of ADM in the Asia-Pacific region
• Comparative analysis of data and IP governance for model training
• The expansion of China’s ADMs to the world and the pushbacks
• Global competition for ADM material infrastructure – e.g. data centers, chips and minerals
• Chinese investment in global ADM companies and stock markets
• Open or closed? Debating China’s global leadership in ADM
• Research methods: challenges, innovations, and reflections in studying Chinese ADM in the global context.

Individual paper abstracts: Please submit your abstract of 300-500 words (including the paper’s main argument, method, and contribution), with a short biography for each author.
Panel proposals: 1500 words with 3-4 abstracts and author details.

Please send paper abstracts and panel proposals to: circ2024.au@gmail.com

Since 2005, the Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) has featured a graduate student paper contest. This important tradition highlights the best work(s) by members of the new generation of CIRC scholars.

To participate in this contest, the papers need to be authored / co-authored by students only. They cannot be co-authored by any faculty member or postdoc. The papers should be written in full, in a similar format as journal articles (8,000 words), but not published or accepted for publication in an academic journal, book, or any other formal outlet or platform. They should include authors’ names and affiliations.

Winners—1^st price and runner(s) up—will be chosen by the CIRC Steering Committee (in collaboration with the conference organising committee). The result will be announced on the last day of CIRC 2024 on 18 June 2024.

If you wish to participate in the student paper contest, please send your full paper to the following email, with the subject “Student paper contest”, by 30 May 2024: circ2024.au@gmail.com

Deadline for the submission of paper and panel proposals: 28 February 2024
Notifications of acceptance / confirmation of attendance: 30 March 2024

More details to come. Registrations will open in early 2024.

For general enquiries, please contact: haiqing.yu@rmit.edu.au

Authors Natalie Campbell and T.J. Thomson
Date 7 September 2023

ADM+S researchers Dr James Meese and Dr T.J Thomson from RMIT University have been appointed to editorial board of Communication Research and Practice, a Taylor & Francis journal published on behalf of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association.

The journal aims to publish research that contributes to international scholarship and practice in the broadly defined field of communication, as well as papers that develop new ideas in the field. It is particularly interested in supporting original and innovative work by early career researchers in the Australasian region.

The editorial board is comprised of both established and emerging Communication scholars and thinkers from Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Board members are selected to provide diverse perspectives from the many sub-disciplines within ‘Communication’, such as traditional and digital media, organisational, corporate and intercultural communication, communication theory, equity, disability and diversity, and much more.

Authors  Mark Sanderson, Julian Thomas, Kieran Hegarty & Lisa Given
Date 4 September 2023

Today marks an important milestone in the history of the internet: Google’s 25th birthday. With billions of search queries submitted each day, it’s difficult to remember how we ever lived without the search engine.

What was it about Google that led it to revolutionise information access? And will artificial intelligence (AI) make it obsolete, or enhance it?

Let’s look at how our access to information has changed through the decades – and where it might lead as advanced AI and Google Search become increasingly entwined.

1950s: public libraries as community hubs

In the years following the second world war, it became generally accepted that a successful post-war city was one that could provide civic capabilities – and that included open access to information.

So in the 1950s information in Western countries was primarily provided by local libraries. Librarians themselves were a kind of “human search engine”. They answered phone queries from businesses and responded to letters – helping people find information quickly and accurately.

Libraries were more than just a place to borrow books. They were where parents went to look for health information, where tourists requested travel tips, and where businesses sought marketing advice.

The searching was free, but required librarians’ support, as well as a significant amount of labour and catalogue-driven processes. Questions we can now solve in minutes took hours, days or even weeks to answer.

1990s: the rise of paid search services

By the 1990s, libraries had expanded to include personal computers and online access to information services. Commercial search companies thrived as libraries could access information through expensive subscription services.

These systems were so complex that only trained specialists could search, with consumers paying for results. Dialog, developed at Lockheed Martin in the 1960s, remains one of the best examples. Today it claims to provide its customers access “to over 1.7 billion records across more than 140 databases of peer-reviewed literature”.

Another commercial search system, The Financial Times’ FT PROFILE, enabled access to articles in every UK broadsheet newspaper over a five-year period.

But searching with it wasn’t simple. Users had to remember typed commands to select a collection, using specific words to reduce the list of documents returned. Articles were ordered by date, leaving the reader to scan for the most relevant items.

FT PROFILE made valuable information rapidly accessible to people outside business circles, but at a high price. In the 1990s access cost £1.60 a minute – the equivalent of £4.65 (or A$9.00) today.

Author  Loren Dela Cruz
Date 30 August 2023

In Reassembling Rubbish, Josh Lepawsky argues that a more democratic electronics industry would involve “forms of public decision making in design and manufacturing” and that “production itself must be much more radically politicized.” To participate in reimagining electronics production, however, “citizens need access to data about wastes arising upstream in resource extraction and manufacturing” to counter the usual emphasis on downstream e-waste and recycling.

The second event in the Electronics < > Ecologies series for ADM+S, WASTE advances this agenda by exploring the material discards that attend each step of the supply chain for computational devices. Interrogating the current turn to circular design as a way out of the waste problem, we will focus on the very definition of waste that the electronics industry has adopted. The aim is to reveal blindspots, policy weaknesses, and problems that may arise as automated decision-making begins to influence product design, manufacturing and disposal.

Australia has one of the highest e-waste rates in the world. And while neighbouring countries have substantial markets for informal reuse and resale, current international regulations fall short of facilitating a legitimate secondary market for electronics due to outdated notions of “developing” economies’ needs.

Recycling is poor consolation for the environmental damage already wrought in the production and refinement of rare resources in technology supply chains. WASTE invites industry practitioners, designers, journalists and activists to join pioneers in the field of waste and discard studies to explore these issues, documenting the geopolitical and environmental dependencies involved in material extraction, use, reuse and recycling. Experiments that foreground the value of electronics discards and best practices for product stewardship are particularly welcome, to show the ongoing potential of technology’s many lives and afterlives.

Learning from already existing circular economies in the Asia-Pacific, and emerging best practices in sustainable user experience design, WASTE will share theories and approaches that support productive parasitism and durability as design priorities for electronics.

Author  Kathy Nickels
Date 28 August 2023

Digital Energy Futures documentary directed by ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making researcher Prof Sarah Pink has received the Social Impact Award from the Royal Institution of Australia SCINEMA International Film Festival.

The documentary was one of eight films selected to feature in the 2023 SCINEMA film festival, one of the largest science film festivals in the southern hemisphere. 

This film explores how people living in Australia see their future lives in a country where increasingly extreme weather, concerns about public health, growing levels of technological automation are creating uncertainty about demand for electricity in the future.

Author  Loren Dela Cruz
Date 24 August 2023

ADM+S PhD Students Marwah Alaofi and Kaixin Ji, and Associate Investigator Dr Damiano Spina from RMIT University recently presented their research on generating user-centred approaches to evaluating and understanding information retrieval and interaction at the 46th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR).

SIGIR is the premier international forum for the latest developments and discussions in the Information Retrieval domain. In its 46th edition, SIGIR ’23 featured keynotes delivered by figures from both academia and industry, including representatives from tech companies such as Google and Microsoft, with a specific focus on the impact and the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Information Retrieval research and development.

Damiano and Kaixin presented their work on understanding how our bodies, through pulse, sweat levels, and pupil size, are reacted and impacted during information-processing tasks such as reading, listening, speaking and typing. Their study informs machine learning models that train on this type of data. This research is a result of a collaboration with an ADM+S Research Fellow Dr Danula Hettiachchi and supervised by ADM+S Investigators Prof Flora Salim, Prof Falk Scholer and Dr Damiano Spina.

Read the paper: Examining the Impact of Uncontrolled Variables on Physiological Signals in User Studies for Information Processing Activities

Author  Natalie Campbell
Date 17 August 2023

On 4 August 2023 ADM+S researchers made a submission to the Commonwealth Government’s Discussion Paper on Safe and Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The submission, made in response to the Department of Industry, Science and Resource’s consultation on Safe and Responsible AI in Australia, seeks to inform government consideration on how regulatory systems can promote responsible, ethical, and inclusive AI and ADM for the benefit of all Australians.

The ADM+S submission is the product of a collaborative process involving direct contributions from ADM+S researchers, led and consolidated by Prof Kimberlee Weatherall from the University of Sydney Law School.

Bringing together researchers from different institutions, disciplines and perspectives, this effort consolidates research and thinking to prompt government interventions around the risks that fast and innovative AI developments are posing to society, and greater public concern.

Author  Natalie Campbell
Date 15 August 2023

On 15 August 2023 the eSafety Commissioner released their Tech Trends Position Statement on Generative AI, acknowledging the ADM+S Centre and multiple key researchers for their contributions to the report.

With the arrival of generative AI, machine learning is no longer restricted to making predictions or classifications, and instead, can create completely new outputs trained from existing information. These systems include chatbots, image or video generators, and voice generators.

With these tech advancements come opportunities and risks. As Australia’s independent online safety regulator and educator, eSaftey’s commitment to understanding and anticipating tech trends and emerging challenges is reflected in a series of Tech Trend reports, collaborating with researchers, regulators, and industry experts to define interventions that can immediately improve user safety and empowerment.

Author  Natalie Campbell
Date 11 August 2023

ADM+S Research Fellow Dr Amanda Lawrence has been awarded a research funding grant from the Wikimedia Foundation for her project, ‘Wikipedia, reliable sources and public policy issues’.

Through the Wikimedia research fund, the foundation seeks to promote the Wikimedia research community by supporting projects with potential for direct, positive impact on local or global Wikimedia communities.

‘Wikipedia, reliable sources and public policy issues’ will investigate the role of policy and research reports from organisations, government agencies, think tanks and academic research centres on Wikipedia.

Dr Lawrence said, “this research project seeks to understand the extent that policy research reports and papers from organisations are being cited on Wikipedia, what kinds of sources are being cited and how can editors and readers be supported in evaluating their credibility.”

Dr Lawrence’s recently completed PhD focussed on how diverse research publications and public policy from organisations are used and managed, setting a foundation for this deeper analysis of reliable sources on open knowledge systems.

“A key part of Wikimedia’s defence system against mis/disinformation is its content and citation policies. However, Wikipedia’s reliable sources policies are still grounded in traditional notions of the research publishing economy as primarily commercial and scholarly publishers and mainstream news media.

This is problematic for public policy and public interest topics which tends to have a more diverse media economy of sources, including organisations based in government, civil society, education and commercial sectors, and genres such as reports, policy briefs, fact sheets and datasets.”

Authors  Natalie Campbell and Dr TJ Thomson
Date 7 August 2023

Congratulations to Dr TJ Thomson from RMIT, who has been awarded the 2023 Max Crawford Medal, Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities.

On 7 August the Australian Academy of the Humanities, one of Australia’s four learned academies, announced Dr TJ Thomson, Senior Lecturer & DECRA Fellow at RMIT and ADM+S Affiliate, as the winner of the 2023 Medal.

Sitting at the intersection of visual communication and journalism studies, Dr Thomson’s research helps people understand the media they consume and encourages them to consider where it comes from, who is making it and how it’s made or edited.

“Having a more elevated sense of media literacy and engaging with trusted quality news sources helps people to be more engaged in society. Journalism is a place of public debate, exchange and conversation,’ Dr Thomson explains.

“If you’re not connecting to the media, you’re missing out on that whole conversation. And public institutions and organisations involved in that debate are also missing out on your voice and participation in that debate.”

Through a range of engagements, including a major campaign calling on people to check their media facts in partnership with the Australian Associated Press and Facebook, TJ helps Australians identify misinformation (things that are untrue or lacking context) and disinformation (claims that are intended to deceive) online.

He is also part of a ARC-funded grant that uses media literacy to try to combat misinformation in partnership with the ABC, National Film and Sound Archive, Museum of Australian Democracy and the Australian Library and Information Association.

Authors  Natalie Campbell
Date 4 August 2023

ADM+S Research Fellow Dr Thao Phan from Monash University has been elected to the Academy of Science’s National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science (NCHPS).

As a committee member, Dr Phan joins a cohort of Australian scholars who actively engage in shaping the future of their field. Her expertise in feminist technoscience, gender studies, and race studies will inform policy debates within the NCHPS, to ensure growth in the field and support its researchers.

Committee members act as a point of contact for individuals involved in documenting, analysing, and publicising excellence in past and present Australian science, and work to ensure accessibility to these findings.

NCHPS Committee members assess the state of the field to consistently promote collaborations and maintain effective communication within the HPS/STS (History and Philosophy of Science/Science and Technology Studies) community.

Authors  Anand Badola, Dominique Carlon & Kunal Chand
Date 4 August 2023

Higher Degree Research Students Anand Badola, Dominique Carlon and Kunal Chand from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society at QUT, recently attended the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme (OII-SDP) where they participated in 2 weeks of classes and workshops, received feedback on their research projects, and met 28 other participants from around the world.

Reflecting on their experiences, Anand, Dominique and Kunal said, “The OII-SDP was a truly brilliant experience, opening our eyes to broader academic perspectives and setting the foundations to establish long lasting connections and friendships with scholars from across the world.

“There are too many experiences to mention, however some highlights included conducting a networking analysis with Bernie Hogan, a practical ethnographic class on the streets of Oxford with Adam Badger, learning creative ways of disseminating research with Kathyrn Eccles, examining the parallels between UFOs and Bayesian statistics with Joss Wright and using museum artefacts as a form of research ideation with Gemma Newlands.

Authors Anthony McCosker & Yong-Bin Kang
Date 4 August 2023

ADM+S Research Fellow Yong-Bin Kang has achieved recognition at the prestigious VIC iAwards 2023. As an integral part of two outstanding teams at Swinburne University, Yong-Bin has garnered the VIC iAwards Winner in the ‘Government & Public Sector Solution’ category and the VIC iAwards Merit Recipient in the ‘Technology Platform Solution’ category.

The iAwards ‘unearths, recognises and rewards excellence in Australian innovation that is making a difference and has the potential to create positive change for the community – whether this is at home, in the office or on a global scale’.

The VIC iAwards Winner was earned for the innovative AI-powered 5G IoT solution, designed to transform roadside asset monitoring using SmartGarbos. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies like smart IoT devices and edge computers, this solution addresses the critical issue of roadside asset maintenance. Developed in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology, Brimbank City Council, Optus, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the project has brought significant advancements to the municipality of Brimbank City Council.

Author  Natalie Campbell
Date 28 July 2023

Congratulations to 2023 ARC Future Fellowship recipients Dr James Meese from RMIT University and Prof Yolande Strengers from Monash University.

ADM+S researchers secured more than two million dollars in funding to support their respective projects.

The Future Fellowships program provides funding to mid-career researchers to support high quality research in areas of national and international benefit.

ADM+S Future Fellowship projects:

• Professor Yolande Strengers: Home helper robots: Understanding our future lives with human-like AI.
• Dr James Meese: Aligning personalised news recommendations with the public interest.

Prof Strengers’ research aims to understand and plan for the social effects of embedding ‘cute’ home helper robots into people’s everyday lives. The project is expected to generate new knowledge and resources to understand and respond to the emerging opportunities and risks associated with home helper robots, and ultimately inform robot design and policy to improve social outcomes, consumer protections and human-robot relationships.

Author  Natalie Campbell
Date 26 July 2023

Together with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, Telstra has launched the 2023 Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) which reveals that digital inclusion is improving, but gaps remain persistent, and in some cases, have grown.

Telstra CEO Vicki Brady introduced the report and announced that digital inclusion is improving in Australia. However, findings indicate improvements are not being evenly shared.

Vicki Brady said “digital inclusion is based on the premise that everyone should be able to make full use of digital technologies and the benefits they bring. The index is all about measuring those trends of digital inclusion, and it measures across all states and territories in Australia.

Digital exclusion should not be an inevitable outcome of increased digitization, and there’s absolutely a need for ongoing conversation at a national level about what we do to address this.”

The ADII was first developed as a collaboration between Telstra and Swinburne University researchers in 2015 as a survey measure for three key dimensions of digital inclusion in Australia: Access, Affordability, and Digital Ability.*

The 2023 report indicates the overall ADII score continues in an upward trend from 67.5 in 2020, 71.1 in 2021, to the latest measure of 73.2.

Author  Leah Hawkins
Date 26 July 2023

The First Nations Digital Inclusion Plan developed to support a secure, sustainable and inclusive digital future for First Nations Australians has been launched by Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland.

The First Nations Digital Inclusion Plan (FNDIP) seeks to address communications access, affordability and digital ability divides for First Nations communities.

“This is particularly critical for people living in rural and regional communities, where the tyranny of distance has the greatest impact,” said Minister Rowland at the launch in Darwin.

It comes as the findings from the first year of the Mapping the Digital Gap project were launched with the Australian Digital Inclusion Index last week, confirming a notable digital gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, with the gap significantly higher for those in remote and very remote communities.

The FNDIP outlines a framework for delivering Target 17 (Access to Information) of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap by 2026, which aims for the elimination of digital inequality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. It incorporates targeted approaches to improving digital inclusion along the dimensions of access, affordability, and digital ability, and an emphasis on quality data – including that from the Mapping the Digital Gap project – to support the development agenda of First Nations communities.

Author  Loren Dela Cruz
Date 21 July 2023

Is electronics repair a right? And if so, who needs it?

The “Right to Repair” championed by consumers, advocates and entrepreneurs in recent years seems to be gaining traction. Policymakers around the world have responded to campaigns by iFixit, The Repair Association and other organizations with repairability ratings and guides, and legislation is advancing to discourage manufacturers from restrictive features such as proprietary fasteners and soldered-in components. A new wave of startups including Fairphone and Framework have found appreciative consumers for durable electronics, instigating a range of responses from established players who now promote repairable product concepts, “circular” design principles and a growing marketplace for parts, tools and manuals.

But even if a robust right to repair was enshrined by governments everywhere, would this stem the flood of e-waste generated by the existing business model for computer hardware? AI is just the latest in a long line of software hype cycles that have accelerated hardware disposability, created increased demand for specialized systems and components, and frustrated repair and reuse efforts. Even motivated companies cannot arrest the amount of physical hardware exhausted and abandoned in the move to a data-centric economy, and employees as much as consumers are left with little choice but to comply.

Given the dwindling supply of rare earth minerals, emissions from extraction, manufacturing and transport, and the staggering amount of electronics discarded and sent to hibernation globally every day, the benefits of keeping electronic devices in circulation for as long as possible seem obvious. But proprietary software, especially when deployed by vertically-integrated firms, erects barriers to the many social, commercial and ecological opportunities a healthy repair ecosystem creates.

The first in a new event series Electronics < > Ecologies organised by Melissa Gregg for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S), REPAIR brings together expert practitioners, activists and researchers to discuss the planetary problem of electronics repair. We aim to broaden the current focus for repair activism to ask some fundamental questions: Can repairable electronics really solve the problem of product obsolescence? And what does electronics repair look like at scale?

Author  Leah Hawkins
Date 6 July 2023

Congratulations to Mapping the Digital Gap co-researcher Lala Gutchen, Meuram woman from Erub Island in the Torres Strait, on her receipt of the Caring for Country and Culture award at the National NAIDOC Awards Ceremony.

The award recognises Lala for her tireless commitment to the preservation of her country, language, and culture.

Lala is a dedicated community leader and educator, and is working to preserve the Erub Mer language for future generations. Working closely with her father, Kapua Gutchen, an Erub Mer mentor and language holder, they have recorded over 2000 unrecorded words in Erub Mer. She has worked with the Australian Literacy and Numeracy foundation, as well as tech giants Google and Apple, to create an Erub Mer literacy app, the first of its kind, as well as informing development of an early literacy game.

She was the first Torres Strait person to give on-country evidence as a key cultural witness in the successful Queensland Land Court case Waratah Coal vs Youth Verdict, showing the impact the Waratah Coal’s Galilee Coal Project would have on the Torres Strait which are threatened by rising sea levels due to climate change.

Author  Loren Dela Cruz
Date 3 July 2023

ADM+S Chief Investigator Professor Sarah Pink from Monash University has been awarded a 2023 Australian Laureate Fellowship by the Australian Research Council.

One of 17 Australian Laureate Fellows to be recognised in 2023, Professor Pink has received $3,074,590 in funding for her project, The impact of human futures on Australia’s digital and net zero transition (FL230100131).

The five-year research project will involve new ethnographic methods to investigate the role of future human values, practices, and trust in developing a path towards technologically supported environmental sustainability. It will deliver large-scale qualitative models of possible Australian futures and will combine this with quantitative forecasts to aid sustainable transitions in our economy (including in energy and automation).

Professor Pink is the second ADM+S Chief Investigator to be awarded the prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship. Professor Axel Bruns was awarded a Fellowship in 2021.

Author  Loren Dela Cruz
Date 28 June 2023

A new article co-authored by ADM+S researchers Dr Damiano Spina (RMIT University), Prof Mark Sanderson (RMIT University) and Prof Daniel Angus (QUT) along with Assoc Prof Gianluca Demartini (UQ), Dr Dana Mckay (RMIT University), Dr Lauren L. Saling (RMIT University) and Ryen W. White (Microsoft Research), discusses the need for closer collaboration between humans and machines to better address misinformation and polarization.

Published in the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) flagship magazine, Communications of the ACM (CACM), the article Human-AI Cooperation to Tackle Misinformation and Polarization explores two test cases: The first addresses a new framework to tackle misinformation by assisting fact-checkers with computational methods, and the second seeks new models to understand how search engines deliver personalized search results when little or no algorithmic personalization exists.

The article was featured in the ‘Big Trends’ section of the CACM’s special edition on the East Asia and Oceania region which showcases the most impactful research in computer science and technology in the region.

Author  Loren Dela Cruz
Date 1 June 2023

ADM+S Centre Directors Prof Julian Thomas (RMIT University) and Prof Jean Burgess (QUT) have co-led a report with Prof Genevieve Bell AO (ANU) and Prof Shazia Sadiq (UQ) on Generative AI: Language models and multimodal foundation models.

Commissioned by Australia’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) at the request of the Minister for Industry and Science, the Hon Ed Husic MP in February 2023, the rapid research report addressed the following questions:

• What are the opportunities and risks of applying large language models (LLMs) and multimodal foundation models (MFMs) learning technologies over the next two, five and ten years?
• What are some examples of strategies that have been put in place internationally by other advanced economies since the launch of models like ChatGPT to address the potential opportunities and impacts of artificial intelligence (AI)?

Publicly released by the office of Australia’s Chief Scientist today, the report was written in response to rapid changes in the industry following the launch of ChatGPT (a generative AI-powered chatbot) in November 2022 and included input from 24 expert contributors and 7 peer reviewers including ADM+S researchers Dr Jose-Miguel Bello y Villarino (University of Sydney), Dr Dang Nguyen (RMIT University), Prof Christine Parker FASSA (University of Melbourne), Prof Jason Potts (RMIT University), Dr Aaron Snoswell (QUT), Prof Nicolas Suzor (QUT), Prof Kimberlee Weatherall (University of Sydney), Prof Haiqing Yu (RMIT University) and Prof Karen Yeung (University of Birmingham).