Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
As artificial intelligence becomes more pervasive, a new research institute in Adelaide, Australia will be looking for a way to make AI systems that can be trusted to “behave” and make “decisions” in a responsible manner.
“How do we make sure that AI can actually explain what it’s doing?” asks Jon Whittle, Director of Data61 at CSIRO, speaking at the launch in Adelaide yesterday.
“Safe and responsible AI is one of the defining problems of our age.”
Deputy Premier of South Australia, Susan Close, says that these questions are “part of how we take AI, simply the power to crunch data, and turn it into something human that is of value to us, that helps us with all the challenges that we have before us.
“AI is shaping our world. We need to do it in the most human way possible,” Close said at the launch event in Adelaide yesterday.
Close says that Australia cannot just be a consumer of AI technology, it must be a producer.
“We can’t allow ourselves just to be at the end of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, taking whatever it is that these enormous global companies are producing.
“We must empower our businesses, our young people, our researchers, to be able to engage in the development of AI and in its guidance so that what comes of it is useful for us.”
The Responsible AI Research (RAIR) Centre plans to establish Australia as a “global leader in safe and responsible artificial intelligence.” Funds of $20 million were pledged by research partners – the University of Adelaide ($10m), CSIRO ($5m), and the South Australian Government ($5m).
The RAIR Centre will combine the efforts of the University of Adelaide’s Australian Institute of Machine Learning (AIML), CSRO’s Data61 with 4 key research pillars around addressing AI misinformation, ensuring diverse AI, enabling safe AI in the real world, and improving AI explainability.
“Our research will have a national and global impact as we strive for AI solutions that will enhance the lives of everyday Australians,” says AIML Director Simon Lucey.
“RAIR will position Australia as a world leader in responsible AI research, opening up new avenues for investment and economic opportunity.
“There are real jobs and opportunities around working out ways for AI to be more responsible”
“We are a relatively small country, and AI is a very fast moving field.If we want to stay at the forefront of that, we really need to activate the entire ecosystem in Australia,” says Whittle.
The RAIR Centre will be addressing what Whittle says are the 4 most critical areas that have yet to be solved in AI.
One stream will focus on how to safeguard against misinformation in the context of AI, developing methods that enable attribution of trusted data sources to AI-generated content to avoid misinformation and misuse.
The second involves ensuring the data used to train AI is diverse and developing AI systems that can accurately assess their own knowledge limitations and reliably express uncertainty, helping to reduce AI hallucinations.
As AI transitions from the purely digital to the physical world – becoming integrated into robots, for example – RAIR Centre will address how to ensure that people are interacting with those technologies safely in the real world.
The fourth stream will focus developing AI that understands cause-and-effect relationships.
“How do we make sure that AI can actually explain what it’s doing? Which is very important if decisions are being made on behalf of citizens,” says Whittle.
When asked about how AI can be used responsibly in the context of climate change, Whittle told Cosmos there are 2 sides to consider.
“There’s the data centres and the use of electricity and the use of water that is needed to train these large language models. And we’re just started to get emerging research actually quantifying that.
“There’s also research now going on about smaller models that are more energy efficient and getting people to use the right kind of models for the job. So maybe you don’t need the biggest model if you’re just doing a simple search, for example,” Whittle told Cosmos afterwards.
“The flip side of that is … how can you use AI to help with the adaptations that you need for climate change?”
The RAIR Centre will be located at Adelaide’s Lot Fourteen and is expected to be fully operational in early 2025.
