The Institutions research program traces how automated decision-making (ADM) is shaping and changing institutions across the four Focus Areas (health, social services, people and new and media) in their use of algorithms.
We explore how ADM is governed in both public and private institutions – for example, the legal responses to issues like robo-debt in automated social security decision-making, or how civil society groups are trying to make social media platforms more transparent in their use algorithms that personalise advertising and news for different users.
The Institutions program will draw on recent work in law, regulatory theory, communications and the economics of innovation to study how law and social norms influence how automated tools are developed and deployed, and how automation is changing social institutions.
Our research will promote sustainable governance as a key value to protect human rights and autonomy, democratic values, social inclusion, and the sustainable use of resources in ADM.
Together with our partners across industry, media, civil society and regulation, we will generate new insights and create new tools to better protect these values in practice.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
This project maps a range of informal automated activities that proliferate within automated systems across various empirical domains, such as click farming, CAPTCHA hacking, phone farming, dropshipping, OTP scams, fraudulent loan apps, and free jacking.
This project seeks to generate better understandings of the functions, capacities, and normative role of humans within automated decision systems.
This project is a partnership between ADM+S and the New South Wales Ombudsman to map and analyse the use of automated systems in state and local government sectors in New South Wales (NSW).
This project seeks to scope several approaches to deal with Automated Decision-Making and Decision-Support Systems-Related Risks (ADM/DSS RR) through norms and provide an evaluation of those approaches for their consideration in regulatory contexts.
This project will examine existing practices in the collection and use of sexual data by both private and public actors.
Assessing prospective harms vs prospective benefits associated with ADM as a first step to amelioration.
Investigating the enablers of digital transformation and considers digital futures within the cultural sector through evaluating the outcomes of ACMI’s CEO Digital Mentoring Program.
Identifying the opportunities, enablers and barriers for public interest litigation to promote accountability and fairness in automated decision-making.
Examining the political economy of ‘sex tech’ in order to identify how sexual technologies are being governed at scale, how sexual data is being collected, stored, shared and monetised, and how the material benefits of sex tech may be more equitably distributed.
What shapes the environmental impacts of data centres cooling infrastructures?
Examining the challenges to, and opportunities for, liberal and democratic institutions and governance presented by ADM.
Developing a theoretically rich analysis of democracy and freedom given ADM.
Examining common themes with respect to the issues raised by the collection, storage, and use of data for ADM across object domains.
Developing a theoretical classification to operationalise an empirical mapping program for automated decision-making (ADM).