The ADM+S annual symposium shares insights on the future of AI and automated decision-making systems across the Mobilities
Author ADM+S Centre
Date 28 October 2024
The ARC Centre of Excellence of Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) annual symposium brought together Centre researchers from across 9 Australian universities and collaborators to discuss and plan future research in the evolving landscape of AI and automated decision-making across the Centre’s mobilities focus area.
The main symposium featured insights on the current state and future of automated mobilities. Over the course of the three-day event, participants engaged in workshops and panel discussions focused on various mobilities sectors impacted by automation, including public transport, active transportation, and migration services. Attendees examined both the benefits—such as increased efficiency and accessibility—and the risks, including potential inequities and ethical challenges.
The symposium was led by ADM+S Mobilities focus area co-leaders Prof Flora Salim from UNSW and Prof Sarah Pink from Monash University.
One of the symposium’s key aims was to consolidate ongoing research efforts within the Mobilities Focus Area of ADM+S. Presenters showcased findings from the first phase of their research, highlighting innovative applications of automated decision-making across personal, shared, commercial, and public systems.
“Collectively we have delivered, and continue to deliver an excellent range of projects to offer an unprecedented level of interdisciplinary insight into Australian automated and AI mobilities technologies and systems and the benefits, dangers and future possibilities associated with them,” said Prof Pink.
The symposium presented research across themed areas:
- Privacy and Accountability
- Data Capture and Behaviours
- Accessibility and Inclusion
- Systems and Deployment
- Futures
Prof Salim said, “we designed each session to account for both the humanities and social science research papers and the technical computer science and engineering research papers thematically, bringing out a very interesting and engaging sociotechnical panel discussion at the end of each session.”
In addition to traditional academic outputs, the symposium encouraged creative formats for sharing research findings, including poster presentations, ethnographic documentary films and multimedia contributions.
The symposium included research poster contributions from higher degree research students (HDR), early career researchers (ECR) and ADM+S researchers.
The Judges Award for the HDR/ECR poster competition was awarded to:
- Leveraging LBSN check-ins for natural language user profiles to enhance next point-of-interest recommendation with Large Language Models – presented by Wilson Wongso from UNSW.
The People’s Choice Award was awarded to:
- The role of human oversight in AI-assisted decision-making: Navigating the conceptual and regulatory complexities – presented by Emma Finlay from University of Melbourne (HDR/ECR category)
- Optimising electric vehicle charging capability in NSW – presented by Lihuan Li from UNSW (ADM+S research category)
The symposium’s diverse contributions will be compiled into a publication offering valuable insights into the future of automated mobilities. This special issue is set to play a crucial role in fostering dialogue and collaboration within the field, paving the way for innovative advancements and shared understandings.
The event provided the opportunity for interdisciplinary researchers from across partner universities to connect, collaborate, and share research methods and tools that will continue to benefit advancing research in automated decision-making and AI conducted at the Centre.
We would like to thank all the researchers who made the effort to actively participate in the symposium. We also thank UNSW Engineering for co-sponsoring the event.
The Centre acknowledges the symposium organising committee: Prof Flora Salim, Prof Sarah Pink, Assoc Prof Michael Richardson, Dr Hao Xue, Kathy Nickels, Mathew Warren, Hanne Bjellaanes and Thi-Nga Ho.
View a selection of publicly available recorded sessions from the 2024 ADM+S Symposium
View event highlights.
