Australia’s science and research priorities: conversation starter

ADM+S Submission in response to Australia’s National Science and Research Priorities Conversation Starter

Prof Julian Thomas and Dr Amanda Lawrence

ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society

6 April 2023

About ADM+S

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) is a cross-disciplinary, national research centre which commenced operations in mid 2020. ADM+S has been established and supported by the Australian Research Council to create the knowledge and strategies necessary for responsible, ethical, and inclusive automated decision-making. Focus areas for ADM+S research are news and media, social services, health and transport. ADM+S brings together nine of Australia’s leading universities, and more than 80 researchers across the humanities, social and technological sciences, together with an international network of partners and collaborators across industry, research institutions and civil society. More information about the ADM+S, our researchers and research projects can be found on our website: www.admscentre.org.au.

Consultation questions

What are Australia's greatest challenges that science could help to address?

What opportunities should we seize?

What strengths should we maintain and/or build?

Australia faces major challenges with climate change and environmental sustainability, health and wellbeing, social cohesion and cultural resilience, democracy and security, digital transitions and AI, and reconciliation. In our view these are all challenges which science can help address, but they do require humanities and social science (HASS) research and expertise alongside and in collaboration with the STEM disciplines. These issues were identified in the 2022 CSIRO report on global megatrends and the various reports commissioned by the Australian Council of Learned Academies and the Australian Research Data Commons in 2022.

The Australian Academy of the Humanities (AHA) and Academy of Social Sciences in Australian (ASSA) have both identified that one of the major challenges of our time is the risks and benefits of new decision-making technologies. This is an area which encompasses technology and digital platforms, challenges to democracy, and disinformation. It is inherently data intensive, with significant social, political, and economic impacts. Social and cultural analyses are integral to future projects that develop AI systems. Exploring the connections between an AI’s technical design and its cultural and social implications is key to ensuring feasible and sustainable AI systems that benefit society and that people want to use.

The accelerating development, uptake and incorporation of digital, connected and autonomous technologies involves a far-reaching social and economic transformation. How we work, learn and engage with others, as well as the scope and nature of services and information collected by governments and businesses are all in flux to varying degrees. Humanities and social sciences are centrally placed to understand, advise and forecast these social, cultural and economic changes through traditional methods, and through the new techniques and technologies being enabled by linked data and digital technologies themselves. Technology-enabled change in services and consumption is likely to accelerate the existing changes in employment. Freelance and gig-based economies will become pervasive; scale and efficiencies in robotics, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence will transform many occupations and industries; and continued globalisation will transform others. Understanding, forecasting and helping to guide and prepare our society for the adaptations that will be required is a grand challenge for the nation which will require insights from both HASS and STEM disciplines.

New data sources including real-time data, such as mobile and social media allow researchers to model and understand the circulation of information in ways that were not possible just a decade ago. To seize the opportunities and mitigate the risks of new forms of data and technology, we will require new ways of capturing, storing, annotating and analysing data, and new investments in research programs, training and infrastructure. There are also important opportunities for international collaboration, data sharing and comparison if we have the skills, expertise and infrastructure to engage in these areas.

Australia has a unique concentration of expertise and research training in the form of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making + Society (ADM+S). The Centre combines humanities, technological and social science research methods and approaches to advance knowledge and address major social and policy challenges related to the rapid deployment of AI-driven automation across many sectors of government and the economy. The research program at ADM+S is focused on the development of responsible, ethical, and inclusive automated decision-making across four primary industry domains: health, mobility, news and media, and social services.

Does Australia have the capability and capacity needed to address these challenges, opportunities and strengths?

If not, how could we build this?

Australia has made important progress; however, responding to the challenges and opportunities of AI will require further investment in the relevant capabilities and infrastructure. In particular, we need to develop new methods and tools for studying the digital environment, enabling researchers to access the extraordinary volumes of data generated through our daily interactions with highly automated digital platforms. Exemplar work was pioneered in Australia with a national Twitter collection, unique in the world. The current step-change challenge involves a shift from collecting tweets or hyperlinks to observing the much broader range of activities of platforms in shaping cultural, political and social relations. The difficulties in the way of this research — including licensing issues, ethical questions, and intellectual property — have been widely canvassed. However, in recent years, researchers have recognised the potential of novel crowdsourcing and citizen science data initiatives to expand the range of data available for research, answer new questions, and overcome longstanding hurdles. These tools are being developed both here and internationally; it is important now that Australian researchers have access to large-scale digital data to address national challenges and engage with global research.

The development and utilisation of a data-enabled and AI driven research landscape will require a skilled, engaged and capable workforce across all disciplines and the ability to collaborate, apply and share research ethically and safely. The gaps in Australia’s data and technical skills are significant across many disciplines including humanities, social sciences, health and medicine and the natural sciences (see the ACOLA reports 2022). To address this will require investing in training programs that grow and retain a workforce with the necessary data and technical skills. As we have noted, it will also require new investments in research infrastructure to support data collection, analysis and storage from existing and new data sources including digital platforms, sensors, mobile and geospatial, text, images, video and quantitative data and to study the systems, infrastructures, models and algorithms operating and impact on all sectors of society.

Multidisciplinary research initiatives are needed to explore new ways to close the analytical gap between technical and social approaches to AI, as is occurring at ADM+S. Research and development in AI has historically separated technical and social issues, at considerable cost. Research and data infrastructures can avoid these same risks by designing for social and cultural dimensions from the outset.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the National Science and Research Priorities further with you.

Prof Julian Thomas, Director, ADM+S, RMIT University

Email: julian.thomas@rmit.edu.au

Dr Amanda Lawrence, Research Fellow, ADM+S, RMIT University

Email: amanda.lawrence@rmit.edu.au

Web: https://www.admscentre.org.au

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdmsCentre