Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

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    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.
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    Helping and not Harming Animals with AI
    Coghlan, S ; Parker, C (Springer, 2024-03-01)
    Ethical discussions about Artificial Intelligence (AI) often overlook its potentially large impact on nonhuman animals. In a recent commentary on our paper about AI’s possible harms, Leonie Bossert argues for a focus not just on the possible negative impacts but also the possible beneficial outcomes of AI for animals. We welcome this call to increase awareness of AI that helps animals: developing and using AI to improve animal wellbeing and promote positive dimensions in animal lives should be a vital ethical goal. Nonetheless, we argue that there is some value in focusing on technology-based harms in the context of AI ethics and policy discourses. A harms framework for AI can inform some of our strongest duties to animals and inform regulation and risk assessment impacts designed to prevent serious harms to humans, the environment, and animals.
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    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.
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    Social media ads are littered with ‘green’ claims. How are we supposed to know they’re true?
    Parker, C (The Conversation, 2023-12-01)
    Online platforms are awash with ads for so-called “green” products. Power companies are “carbon neutral”. Electronics are “for the planet”. Clothing is “circular” and travel is “sustainable”. Or are they? Our study of more than 8,000 ads served more than 20,000 times in people’s Facebook feeds found many green claims are vague, meaningless or unsubstantiated and consumers are potentially being deceived. This costs consumers, as products claiming to be greener are often more expensive. And it costs the planet, as false and exaggerated green claims – or “greenwashing” – make it seem more is being done to tackle climate change and other environmental crises than is really happening. The widespread use of these claims could delay important action on tackling climate change, as it dilutes the sense of urgency around the issue.
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    Seeing Green: Prevalence of environmental claims on social media
    Gupta, C ; Bagnara, J ; Parker, C ; Obeid, AK (Consumer Policy Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society, 2023-11-21)
    Green claims are everywhere, even on social media. But how easy is it for consumers to tell the difference between a genuine environmental claim and a meaningless one? CPRC, in partnership with ADM+S, has analysed over 20,000 impressions of more than 8,000 Facebook ads with green claims. This report: • highlights the diversity of environmental claims that are made via social media advertising • explores the sectors where environmental claims are most prevalent • examines the frequency of generic environmental terms, specific colours and even emojis used in advertising.
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    The Environmental Social Governance of Animal Welfare: A Review of Current Practice in Responsible Investment in Australia
    Parker, C ; Cornish, A ; Boehm, L (Thomson Reuters (Professional), 2022)
    “Animal cruelty” is the single top issue Australians want to avoid in their investments. As such, animal welfare is an environmental social governance issue that poses significant investment risk due to its capacity to impact on the legal, social and ethical licenses required to operate a business. This article reports the findings of an empirical study, which found that, of 35 asset managers and superannuation funds benchmarked as best practice in responsible investment, only 13 reported considering animal welfare in any way. Given the significance of animal agriculture to the Australian economy, the article suggests some strategies to raise awareness and skills in relation to animal welfare among the responsible investment community, such as the explicit inclusion of animal welfare in Principle 7 of the ASX's Corporate Governance Principles.
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    Reconstituting the Contemporary Corporation through Ecologically Responsive Regulation
    Parker, C ; Haines, F (Thomson Reuters (Professional), 2022)
    Corporate governance and regulation comprise two legal frameworks that operate together from, respectively, the inside out of the corporation and the outside in, to shape business conduct. This article critically analyses two different ways in which corporate governance and business regulation intersect. We argue that both fall short of addressing the ecological and social harms generated by business. The first intersection combines shareholder primacy with domain specific regulation. The second combines a stakeholder model of corporate governance with responsive regulation. Yet, there are signs that a third “ecologically responsive” intersection may emerge to shape business practice in light of the ecological crises we currently face. We see potential for this approach in recent proposals to reform corporate governance to encourage purposive, problem-focused corporations together with greater responsiveness and multiple business forms. To achieve this potential, though, requires a radical re-conceptualisation of regulation towards an “ecologically responsive” approach.
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    Addressing the accountability gap: gambling advertising and social media platform responsibilities
    Parker, C ; Albarran-Torres, C ; Briggs, C ; Burgess, J ; Carah, N ; Andrejevic, M ; Angus, D ; Obeid, A (TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2023-01-01)
    This commentary reports on gambling advertisements served to Australians on Facebook in 2021-2022 that we discovered through a research project that uses novel data donation infrastructure to improve the observability of platform-based advertising. Preliminary findings show that advertisements for online casinos appear on social media and are served to people tagged as located in Australia despite laws that prohibit both the operation and advertising of these gambling services in Australia, and in apparent contravention of company policies that require gambling advertisers to follow applicable law. We outline the harms of normalizing gambling on digital media and argue that the limited accountability of digital platforms for online advertising can contribute to these harms. We suggest ways in which the law and its enforcement and platform responsibility can be reformed to prevent harmful gambling advertising.
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    "Don't mince words": analysis of problematizations in Australian alternative protein regulatory debates
    Johnson, H ; Parker, C ; Evans, B (Springer, 2023)
    Alternative proteins, including plant-based and cell-based meat and dairy analogues, are discursively positioned as a new form of meat and dairy and as a solution to the myriad of issues associated with conventional animal agriculture. Animal agricultural industries across various nations have resisted this positioning in regulatory spaces by advocating for laws that restrict the use of meat and dairy terms on the labels of alternative proteins products. Underlying this contestation are differing understandings of, and vested interests in, desirable futures for animal agriculture. In Australia, this broader contestation led to a national-level inquiry by a Senate parliamentary committee entitled Definitions of meat and other animal products (the Inquiry). This paper reports findings from a study of the problematizations developed through the Inquiry using a framework for policy discourse analysis referred to as Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ methodology. It shows how the dominant discourse throughout the Inquiry moved away from the initial problematization of alternative proteins as a threat to animal agriculture. Instead, both industries were ultimately positioned as not in competition and only labelling laws were problematized with the solution being amendments to ensure ‘consumer clarity’. This outcome ignored a range of alternative problematizations related to the ethical, environmental, health, social and economic issues raised by animal agriculture and by alternative proteins. This lack of scrutiny benefits both industries, by closing off the policy discourse to consideration of a range of alternative interests, voices, and potential solutions, such as stricter health and welfare regulation.
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    Harm to Nonhuman Animals from AI: a Systematic Account and Framework
    Coghlan, S ; Parker, C (Springer, 2023-06-01)
    This paper provides a systematic account of how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies could harm nonhuman animals and explains why animal harms, often neglected in AI ethics, should be better recognised. After giving reasons for caring about animals and outlining the nature of animal harm, interests, and wellbeing, the paper develops a comprehensive ‘harms framework’ which draws on scientist David Fraser’s influential mapping of human activities that impact on sentient animals. The harms framework is fleshed out with examples inspired by both scholarly literature and media reports. This systematic account and framework should help inform ethical analyses of AI’s impact on animals and serve as a comprehensive and clear basis for the development and regulation of AI technologies to prevent and mitigate harm to nonhumans.