Gradient Institute

The Gradient Institute

A not-for-profit research institute created in 2018, Gradient is made up of world-class machine learning researchers. Their vision, like ours, is to progress the research, design, development and adoption of ethical AI systems.

Gradient is jointly funded by IAG, the University of Sydney, and CSIRO Data61. The ANU also has a research agreement with Gradient, through the RSCS and HMI. Gradient has already established itself as one of the world's most exciting groups of machine learning practitioners and researchers with a commitment to putting ethical machine learning into practice. They have undertaken significant projects with government partners in Australia and overseas, and promise to make an indispensable contribution to realising the promise of fair, accountable, and transparent machine learning systems. 

Bill Simpson-Young, Tiberio Caetano, Lachlan McCalman and their team have already provided invaluable support to the HMI Grand Challenge. We have consulted with them on their practical projects, and our interdisciplinary team has vastly benefited from their expertise in machine learning, including a training course that they provided us with gratis. Together with Gradient, we were joint-sponsors of a major conference on the ethics of data science that was to take place in March, and we are collaborating with them and IAG on a research project that we anticipate is likely to lead to an application for an ARC linkage grant. We are also collaborating with them on a research project with the ACT Education Directorate. They are very likely to be close partners in any subsequent applications for external funding that we submit, and we have even discussed making joint appointments.

For HMI, Gradient provide a crucial way to learn about the issues that arise in the real-world implementation of machine learning systems. They are vital collaborators, helping us to bridge the gap between academic research and industry and government practice. And they are one of the cornerstones of the intellectual community that we are building in Australia around the multi-disciplinary research into the development of democratically legitimate AI systems.