Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    ADM+S submission to the Safe and responsible AI in Australia discussion paper
    Weatherall, K ; Cellard, L ; Goldenfein, J ; Haines, F ; Parker, C (ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, 2023-08-04)
    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 welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Department of Industry, Science and Resource’s consultation on Safe and responsible AI in Australia. Resolving the legal and regulatory challenges posed by artificial intelligence—and how regulatory systems can promote responsible, ethical, and inclusive AI and ADM for the benefit of all Australians—is one of the Centre’s founding objectives. This submission seeks to highlight not only well-known harms and challenges brought about by these technologies (such as privacy risks, or unfair bias and discrimination), but also the new challenges and shifts that are emerging as a result of the rise of generative AI/foundation models and associated developments, including the broad take-up and rapid integration of generative AI, and its broad potential as a general purpose technology embedded in complex supply chains.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    ADM+S Working Paper Series: The Australian Ad Observatory Technical and Data Report
    Angus, D ; Obeid, AK ; Burgess, J ; Parker, C ; Andrejevic, M ; Bagnara, J ; Carah, N ; Fordyce, R ; Hayden, L ; Lewis, K ; O'Neill, C ; Albarran-Torres, C ; Cellard, L (ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, 2024-01-08)
    This report provides an overview of the Australian Ad Observatory project’s data, infrastructure, and software tools, and serves as a detailed technical companion to the Background Paper previously published (Burgess et al., 2022). The Australian Ad Observatory (‘Ad Observatory’) is a project of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) that aims to improve the observability of targeted online advertising in Australia using novel data donation infrastructure and hybrid digital methods. The first section of the report provides an overview of the Ad Observatory project’s data donation infrastructure, analytical dashboards and researcher tools. It describes, visualises, and discusses in detail the pattern of reported demographic characteristics and observations gathered from our pool of participants. We explain how this pool is positioned in relation to benchmark populations, with particular focus on the Australian Facebook user population. We outline the data types gathered from Facebook using this infrastructure, which include ad images and text as well as metadata such as the WAIST (Why Am I Seeing This) explanations provided to users. We also explain how meaningful information is extracted and aggregated from this data using the Observatory’s tools and dashboards. The report details the project’s research questions and how these questions are pursued within nested case studies, each of which deploys purpose-specific but linked analytical strategies using the Ad Observatory’s central infrastructure and tools. These questions are linked to methods that are uniquely enabled by the Ad Observatory, and that are designed to investigate the overall volume, dynamics, and targeting patterns of Facebook’s ad system including the relationships between its temporal dynamics, demographic targeting, and the symbolic features of ad content. The final section of the report details three case studies that have been undertaken within the project to date, including accounts of how they have worked with Ad Observatory data to answer topic-specific questions. These case studies are focused on areas of societal risk, where advertising is both potentially influential and subject to public oversight and regulation. The case studies include: investigations of environmental or ‘green’ claims in ads; the temporal patterns, sequencing, and targeting of alcohol advertising; and the extent and nature of online gambling advertising in Australia. The report concludes with brief discussions of how the project team has approached key ethical and compliance challenges, including copyright, human research ethics, defamation, and the amplification of potentially harmful content.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Investing for Sustainable Food Systems: Current Practice in Australia
    Carey, R ; Parker, C ; Robinson, E ; Sacks, G ( 2021-08-19)
    Summary • Food systems are a major driver of climate change, biodiversity loss, depletion of freshwater resources and pollution of waterways. • We examined the extent to which major institutional investors engaged in responsible investment in Australia consider sustainable food systems as part of their investment approach. • Nineteen out of 35 investors incorporated considerations related to sustainable food systems into investment decisions in some way. • We identified six strategies that investors used to incorporate sustainable food system considerations into their decision making. • The most common strategy used by investors was 'corporate engagement and shareholder action’ (using shareholder power to influence corporate behaviour). • The sustainable food system themes most commonly mentioned by these investors were ‘human rights’ (specifically labour rights in the food supply chain) and ‘animal welfare and anti-microbial resistance’. • Only one company, Australian Ethical, had a comprehensive policy on investment decisions related to sustainable food systems. • Examples of good practice included engaging with companies in relation to modern slavery concerns in the food supply chain, negatively screening intensive animal agriculture due to concerns about animal welfare and environmental sustainability, and investing in agricultural land to support a climate transition. • Future research will focus on engaging with investors to identify opportunities for progressing an investment agenda that promotes sustainable food systems in Australia.