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Dominique Carlon winner of the inaugural ADM+S HDR Essay Prize
Author Kathy Nickels
Date 11 October 2022
ADM+S PhD candidate Dominique Carlon (QUT) has been announced as the winner of the inaugural ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) Higher Degree Research (HDR) Student Essay Prize.
Higher Degree Research students from the ADM+S were invited to submit a 2,000 word essay to challenge existing perspectives or suggest new directions of research in automated decision-making (ADM) in the field of news and media.
Carlon’s winning essay “Bots are more than human” argues that debates about the risks and benefits of bots having human-like qualities overlooks other creative and interesting possibilities that they could offer society.
Dr James Meese (Co-leader of the News and Media Focus area at the ADM+S Centre, RMIT) said that the essay was genuinely innovative.
“The essay will no doubt inspire academia and industry to think more deeply about how to best deploy bot technologies in the future” said Dr Meese.
Melanie Trezise (University of Sydney) was awarded an honorable mention for her essay “‘If it bleeds, it leads’: What is human negativity bias teaching the machine?”. The essay explored how AI systems could potentially counteract negativity bias in the news.
Other submissions looked at ADM and the curation of news on Youtube, cognitive bias, and the dangers of newsworthiness criteria in journalism.
Essay submissions were judged according to originality and innovation; argument structure; and quality of analysis by the ADM+S HDR Essay Prize judging panel: Dr Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Dr James Meese, Dr Kylie Pappalardo and Professor Mark Sanderson, chaired by: Sally Storey.
The winner receives $2000 (AUD) and their essay has been published on the Automated Decision-Making and Society publication on Medium.com.
Read the winning essay, Bots as more than human on the ADM+S Medium publication and the ADM+S Website.
Listen to an interview with Dominique Carlon on the ADM+S Podcast: Bots as More Than Human?
