Michael gave a talk to a Canberra Meetup on responsible AI, setting machine learning in context and asking how it might help us to improve how we think about ethics.
I discussed the pitfalls of over- and underestimating the applicability of modelling results to understanding real world epistemic communities, and how to have an appropriate epistemic attitude towards them.
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I use category theory, the mathematical theory of structure, to illuminate the ways in which mathematical formalisms are used to represent real-world systems.
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This paper is about how an agent should rationally update her probabilistic beliefs when her conceptual space (modelled as an algebra of propositions) grows. This is not like typical cases of learning, which are cases in which an agent comes to revise her beliefs for propositions about which she was already aware. We investigate whether the learning rules for the typical cases of learning can be extended to the case of conceptual growth.
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Seth Lazar was invited to be on the Academic Board's Data Governance Working Group, with the remit to consider the university's principles and policies around data protection, in particular in relation to the data generated by members of the university as they use its services (digital and otherwise).
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Here HMI CI Katie Steele argues that on a certain way of modelling an agent's preferences and understanding her "time preferences", exponential time discounting is uniquely rational. However, if "time preferences" are understood differently, then exponential time discounting is not uniquely rational. This helps in understanding why the prescription of exponential time discounting has many defenders but also many detractors.
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Some realistic models of neural spiking take into account spike timing, yet the practical relevance of spike timing is often unclear. I show that polychronous networks reflect a distinct organisational principle from notions of pluripotency, redundancy, or re-use, and argue that properly understanding this phenomenon requires a shift to a time-sensitive, process-based view of computation.
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In semester 2, HMI RFs Alban Grastien and Atoosa Kasirzadeh are teaching a course entitled "Advanced Topics on Artificial Intelligence" in the Research School of Computer Science at the ANU. This course presents some of the techniques developed in AI for decision making under uncertainty, and introduces the variety of moral and sociological implications of these decisions.
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This article discusses personal data, personal information, internet of things, and consumer law.
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There has long been debate within the scholarly literature around the role and the limits of consent in promoting welfare enhancing outcomes and the need for consent-based gate-keeping mechanisms to be supplemented by other protections. Moves to bolster consent within the field of consumer privacy, and indeed, the criticisms of relying on it, should be couched within this broader literature.
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This book offers a conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective for the analysis and design of sociotechnical systems.
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