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 ...
Sep 12, 2022•31 min
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 cla...
Sep 12, 2022•28 min
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 ab...
Sep 12, 2022•47 min
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 ...
Sep 12, 2022•31 min
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 disc...
Jul 29, 2022•37 min
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 e...
Jul 07, 2022•32 min
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. View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/transcript-making-sense-of-deepfakes/
Jun 13, 2022•19 min
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 assistiv...
Jun 05, 2022•32 min
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...
May 24, 2022•30 min
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. View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/transcript-political-advertising/
May 17, 2022•17 min
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 tex...
May 12, 2022•19 min
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 ...
Apr 05, 2022•44 min
In this episode, Professor Julian Thomas, Ivana Jurko and Amanda Robinson discuss the partnership between ADM+S and Humanitech . They explore what it means to design and build responsible, ethical, and inclusive frontier technologies, and the importance of a cross-sector approach. View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/transcript-adms-and-australian-red-cross-partnership/...
Feb 11, 2022•37 min
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. View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/transcript-digital-data-literacies-for-sexual-health-practices/
Sep 16, 2021•19 min
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. View transcript:...
Aug 03, 2021•14 min
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 ...
Jul 02, 2021•39 min
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. View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/how-do-search-engines-decid...
Jun 30, 2021•17 min
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 Me...
Jun 14, 2021•28 min•Season 1Ep. 5
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 View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/transcript-how-metrics-and-algorithms-are-changing-journalism/...
Jun 13, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 4
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...
Jun 10, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 4
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 View transcript: https://www.admscentre.org.au/transcript-autom...
Jun 10, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 1
