Fairness in Natural Language Processing. Natural language processing (NLP) has achieved spectacular commercial successes in recent years, and has been deployed across an ever-increasing breadth of devices and application areas. At the same time, there has been stark evidence to indicate that naively-trained models amplify biases in training data, and perform inconsistently across text relating to different demographic groupings of individuals. This project aims to systematically quantify the ext ....Fairness in Natural Language Processing. Natural language processing (NLP) has achieved spectacular commercial successes in recent years, and has been deployed across an ever-increasing breadth of devices and application areas. At the same time, there has been stark evidence to indicate that naively-trained models amplify biases in training data, and perform inconsistently across text relating to different demographic groupings of individuals. This project aims to systematically quantify the extent of such biases, and develop models that are both more socially equitable, as well as less prone to expose private data in the learned representations. In doing so, it will make NLP more accessible to new populations of users, and remove socio-technological barriers to NLP uptake.Read moreRead less
Towards realistic verbal interactions between people and computers-a probabilistic approach. This project aims to facilitate natural spoken interactions between people and computer systems, addressing obstacles to the acceptance of these systems. We will investigate computational models for relevant aspects of spoken dialogue, which will be implemented in computer systems for diverse tasks (for example, home devices and phone-enabled services).
Automated assessment of data quality in biological knowledge resources. This project aims to develop methods for identifying poor quality data in biological databases. Research in biomedicine is underpinned by massive databases of biological data. Data quality is largely managed through manual curation, but automated methods to assess quality are critically needed. This project expects to develop a suite of computational tools for assessing biological data quality, utilising an innovative approa ....Automated assessment of data quality in biological knowledge resources. This project aims to develop methods for identifying poor quality data in biological databases. Research in biomedicine is underpinned by massive databases of biological data. Data quality is largely managed through manual curation, but automated methods to assess quality are critically needed. This project expects to develop a suite of computational tools for assessing biological data quality, utilising an innovative approach based on network analysis of database record connectivity. These tools will enable quantifying data quality at scale. Researchers, evidence-based decision-makers in biomedicine, and the analytical or predictive tools that use this data will make more reliable inferences and decisions.Read moreRead less
Improving human reasoning with causal Bayes networks: a multimodal approach. This project aims to improve human causal and probabilistic reasoning about complex systems by taking a user-centric, multimodal, interactive approach. The project will explore new integrated visual and verbal ways of explaining a causal probabilistic model and its reasoning, to reduce known human reasoning difficulties, and investigate how to reduce cognitive load by prioritising the most useful user- and context-speci ....Improving human reasoning with causal Bayes networks: a multimodal approach. This project aims to improve human causal and probabilistic reasoning about complex systems by taking a user-centric, multimodal, interactive approach. The project will explore new integrated visual and verbal ways of explaining a causal probabilistic model and its reasoning, to reduce known human reasoning difficulties, and investigate how to reduce cognitive load by prioritising the most useful user- and context-specific information. Expected outcomes include novel AI methods that empower users to drive the reasoning process and strengthen trust in the system’s reasoning. Performance will be assessed in medical and legal domains, with significant potential benefits to end users from better, more transparent reasoning and decision making.Read moreRead less
Personalised topic modelling and sentiment analysis for enhanced information discovery over document streams. This project will develop personalised information discovery, navigation and management systems of online content for the creative industries, e.g. to help advertising agencies understand market trends, and enable designers to discover and analyse information relating to new product concepts.
Biochemical text mining for advancing chemical and pharmaceutical knowledge. The project aims to develop novel natural language processing methods to find, extract and structure complex chemical reaction information in scientific literature. The project addresses a recognised bottleneck to efficiency in the drug discovery process, by enabling biochemical research results to be turned into actionable information. This has the potential to inform and accelerate development of effective drug treatm ....Biochemical text mining for advancing chemical and pharmaceutical knowledge. The project aims to develop novel natural language processing methods to find, extract and structure complex chemical reaction information in scientific literature. The project addresses a recognised bottleneck to efficiency in the drug discovery process, by enabling biochemical research results to be turned into actionable information. This has the potential to inform and accelerate development of effective drug treatments through the linking of relevant biochemical information. By delivering new methods that improve the compilation of knowledge about chemicals and drugs from textual information resources, the project hopes to enable faster drug discovery.Read moreRead less
Natural language processing for automated validation of protein databases. The project aims to use natural language processing and information retrieval to reconcile and improve sources of biological information. Biological research has produced vast volumes of information about proteins, captured in structured resources (databases) and unstructured documents. However, the accuracy of much of this information is questionable. The project proposes to develop methods to validate data and reduce th ....Natural language processing for automated validation of protein databases. The project aims to use natural language processing and information retrieval to reconcile and improve sources of biological information. Biological research has produced vast volumes of information about proteins, captured in structured resources (databases) and unstructured documents. However, the accuracy of much of this information is questionable. The project proposes to develop methods to validate data and reduce the dramatic inconsistencies in protein information resources by leveraging observed correlations and complementarity between them, and specifically through targeted fact extraction from the biomedical literature. These methods will be applied at scale across millions of published articles, to infer and validate functional information.Read moreRead less
Explaining the outcomes of complex computational models. This project aims to develop new algorithms that automatically generate explanations for the results produced by complex computational models. In recent times, these models have become increasingly accurate, and hence pervasive. However, the reasoning of Deep Neural Networks and Bayesian Networks, and of complex Regression models and Decision Trees is often unclear, impairing effective decision making by practitioners who use the results o ....Explaining the outcomes of complex computational models. This project aims to develop new algorithms that automatically generate explanations for the results produced by complex computational models. In recent times, these models have become increasingly accurate, and hence pervasive. However, the reasoning of Deep Neural Networks and Bayesian Networks, and of complex Regression models and Decision Trees is often unclear, impairing effective decision making by practitioners who use the results of these models or investigate the decisions made by the systems. Practical benefits of clear decision making reasoning by complex computational models include reduced risk, increased productivity and revenue, appropriate adoption of technologies including improved education for practitioners, and improved outcomes for end users. Significant benefits will be demonstrated through the evaluations with practitioners in the areas of healthcare and energy.Read moreRead less
AI for Legal Problem Diagnosis in the Diverse Language of Australians. The number of Australians with unmet legal needs is estimated to be over four million people per year and growing, and free legal assistance is severely under-resourced. A bottleneck for free legal assistance providers is the determination of what (if any) specific legal needs the individual has, to which end this project proposes to develop AI models to semi-automate the process, with particular focus on fairness across user ....AI for Legal Problem Diagnosis in the Diverse Language of Australians. The number of Australians with unmet legal needs is estimated to be over four million people per year and growing, and free legal assistance is severely under-resourced. A bottleneck for free legal assistance providers is the determination of what (if any) specific legal needs the individual has, to which end this project proposes to develop AI models to semi-automate the process, with particular focus on fairness across users of all backgrounds, generalisation from small amounts of curated data, and dynamic interaction with the help-seeker. The project will help deliver legal assistance to some of the most vulnerable members of Australian society, and reinforce Australia's position as a world leader in AI for Law.Read moreRead less
Responding to requests and situations in assistive computer systems - a decision-theoretic approach. This project aims to enable computer agents to respond appropriately to people's spoken requests and circumstances (e.g., ask questions or perform actions). This project will investigate computational models for response generation, which will be implemented in assistive computer systems, thus enabling people to interact more easily with these systems.