PEOPLE
The People research program will build on our world leading expertise in anthropology, sociology and media and communication studies to account for how people are implicated at all stages of ADM.
Utopian visions of ADM promise new levels of personalisation, control and choice in our future lives. Yet we still know very little about how ADM is really being incorporated, reinvented or resisted as part of everyday lives.
For example, in many countries, apps using ADM have been introduced to manage the spread of COVID19. While these apps can help contain the spread of the coronavirus, some operate to document and limit people’s movements and social encounters in ways that cannot easily be challenged.
There can be a temptation to view people simplistically as users or consumers of technologies, or faceless citizens or publics in our society. But by framing people in this way there is a gap in understanding how, where, when and why ADM might impact on and matter within the complexity of people’s lives: both in the present and in imagined futures.
The People program understands ADM in Australia within a global context, which involves accounting for differences and inequalities in the global South, North and places in between. For example, while self-driving cars are one of the most hyped technologies that use ADM, and they have been pitched as the solution to societal and environmental issues, it is unclear how these uses will be possible in countries or regions with digital and road infrastructures that are unprepared for them.
The People research program will examine: how people make, operate, and re-invent automated decision-making tools and processes; the relationship between human and automated decisions; how social inequalities, inequities and power relationships shape the design and uses of ADM; and the changes needed so that responsible and ethical automated futures can be best achieved.
To understand, influence and re-imagine the present and future of ADM, the People program will innovate new collaborative and creative research methodologies designed to understand the complex and changing environments through which people and technologies emerge together.
Inspired by social sciences, design, the arts and documentary practice, our new methods will reveal how ADM is already participating in and experienced as part of everyday life, how it is imagined in different and sometimes competing visions of futures, and how these futures can be better guided towards responsible, inclusive, equitable and ethical outcomes for society.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
This project maps a range of informal automated activities that proliferate within automated systems across various empirical domains, such as click farming, CAPTCHA hacking, phone farming, dropshipping, OTP scams, fraudulent loan apps, and free jacking.
This project seeks to generate better understandings of the functions, capacities, and normative role of humans within automated decision systems.
Our premise is that everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from digital technologies: to manage their health, access education and services, participate in cultural activities, organise their finances, follow news and media, and connect with family, friends, and the wider world.
This project explores the role of testing, prototyping, trialling and other techniques of controlled experimentation for AI and other automated decision-making systems in Australia.
In partnership with She’s A Crowd, this research project investigates the shortfalls of automated decision-making (ADM) within the rideshare sector through a short docu-drama.
Investigating the increasing use of automated decision-making systems in the provision of automated loans in India.
This project unpicks the detail of the conceptual frameworks that inform ADM as well as the ways they are engaged in the everyday work practices of developers, designers, businesses and policy makers.
By documenting experiences of the so-called 17%, the people who see the world differently, this project reveals biases and threats of automated transport mobilities and also uncovers creative opportunity and innovation.
Flight Paths, Freeways and Railroads is a series of short film vignettes exploring how diverse participants currently experience transport mobilities and how automated technologies might be part of our future lives.
Our research addresses how shifts in and imaginaries of mobilities technologies, services, communities and personal trajectories are changing the landscape of everyday mobility, and reframes emerging automated and connected mobility technologies and data as part of inclusive and diverse everyday worlds and respectful, responsible futures.
Experimenting with creative methods to explore future visions of automated mobilities in Australia.
Examining common themes with respect to the issues raised by the collection, storage, and use of data for ADM across object domains.
Measuring digital inclusion and media use in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Examining the ways in which automated decision-making (ADM) is being integrated into the lives of diverse and non-dominant communities across Australia.
This project investigates current developments in journalistic practice by conducting in-depth interviews with news workers, including journalists, social media editors, developers, programmers, computer scientists, graphic designers and social media marketing staff.
This project is a review of the current state of ADM implementation, practices and visions in different regions in the Global South.