How can algorithmic decision-making systems be developed that are responsible, ethical and inclusive?
Automated decision-making systems transform social, economic and cultural life. They also transform how cultural archives are constructed, used and controlled. Automation raises significant questions for the organisation of industries and labour, policy approaches and regulatory frameworks, fairness and accountability. We work across disciplines and institutions to develop responsible, ethical, and inclusive approaches to automated decision-making across media, health, and social services.
Research Activities
Collaboration on ARC CoE for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) research project the Australian Ad Observatory.
Collaboration with researchers at RMIT, QUT, University of Melbourne, Swinburne, Deakin and UQ on the development of an Australian Internet Observatory to develop research tools and approaches for studying automated decision-making by digital platforms.
DCS Projects
‘Love, Loss and LLM’s’ with Leah Henrickson, year. A project that explored how some users of large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are creating chatbots with whom they can have particular kinds of cathartic, therapeutic, social, or romantic conversations.
‘Behind the scenes of artificial intelligence: understanding perceptions and practices of artificial intelligence creators and developers’ with Caitlin Curtis: developing partnerships with key AI creators and developers to understand the gap between trustworthy AI ideals and what happens in practice.
‘Policy Futures of Future Quantum Research’ with Alison Fish, collecting and analysing policy documents about the regulation of quantum technologies across multiple jurisdictions.
Engagement and Events
‘Life in the Age of Automation: Cultural and Creative Perspectives’, 2022. One-day symposium.
‘LASER Talk: The Art and Science of Synthetic Biology’, 2022. Public talk with world-leading biological artists Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr, and Jestin George from Symbiotica at the Institute of Modern Art.
‘Fitter, Happier, More Productive: Algorithmic Regimes & the Future of Work’, 2023. Two-day symposium.
‘Hello AI: An Introductory Workshop on Creative & Critical AI’, 2023. Two workshops run at UQ and QUT with HASS researchers to investigate how they can use AI tools in creative and critical ways in their research practice, and to offer recommendations for future digital research infrastructure.
'Inventing Feedback: Feedback Devices and the Generative Self', 2024. A talk by Andrew Ventimiglia. This talk traced the development of a set of inventions for monitoring the self that developed in the countercultural milieu of 1960s California, which continue to fuel the quasi-human mechanics of generative artificial intelligence and the logics of personalized algorithmic systems today.
'Web Archiving, Web Archives, and Web Scraping', 2024. A one day workshop led by Sam Hames. The workshop indroduced working with the web as a data source for research, including working with existing web archives, making your own archives, web scraping, and ethical impications.