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What happens when you put over 130 artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners, researchers, industry professionals, and enthusiasts in a stunning location to discuss previous developments and upcoming trends in AI?

The answer is the AIML Research Showcase, held Wednesday, October 16 at the in Adelaide.  The event has become one of AIML’s premier research activities and displays the wide breadth of research being conducted at AIML by its members as well as current developments in the global field of AI and machine learning (ML).

'2024 is the year of AI' 

The annual event allows AIML researchers to share their work with a broader audience, including representatives from government and industry. AIML members from students to professors discussed their current work in AI and ML and its implications for everything from the South Australian economy to global culture.

In his opening remarks welcoming attendees, AIML Director expressed his continuing enthusiasm for AI and its growing impact.

“It is so gratifying to see the continued growth of this field and really exciting that two AI scientists received this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics,” said Professor Lucey in reference to Professors John Hopfield of Princeton University, and Geoffrey Hinton of The University of Toronto. “2024 is the year of AI and there are so many amazing things going on.”

“One thing I'm really proud of is, at AIML, we do fantastic research, but we're also doing a lot with the industry,” said Professor Lucey. “We have active relationships with, big multinational companies, and we’ve just announced this year – thanks to state government backing – a new industrial AI centre and a brand-new responsible AI research centre.”

“[AIML] is also increasingly attracting global talent,” he said. “The branding and the reputation that our group and the Institute has is growing and is attracting top talent to Australia.”

“I'm really excited about what that means for South Australia and…for us attracting more global opportunity into the state. Because when you have a win in AI in any one sector such as agriculture or defense, it multiplies [across] every other sector and so grows it.”

“AI is a real silver bullet in terms of upping Australia’s economic complexity and strengthening our economy.”

AIML members display their interests and talents

The Showcase began with a keynote presentation from Associate Professor Angela Yao, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Lead at the National University of Singapore, on ‘Understanding videos with Large Language Models.’ In her talk, Dr Yao discussed advances in ‘video understanding,’ or our ability to interact with videos by using computer vision to ask a series of questions about what is happening in the video.  

A highlight of the Showcase was the stream of enlightening and engaging presentations from AIML researchers and professors including:

• who presented his talk on ‘Learning for 3D vision’ and the role of machine learning in multi-view reconstruction;
•  who presented on ‘Embodied AI and Robotic Vision: Key contributions in ML, Vision and Robotics’ and how he and his team are advancing robotic perception by integrating computer vision and machine learning into it;
• discussed ‘Causal AI: The Way of Change in the Age of AI’ and how AI’s evolution will influence the way that society views the concepts of income and employment;
• and relayed her thoughts on ‘Keeping Pace with Heart Rhythm Disorders: ML Applications in cardiac electrophysiology’ or how electrical behaviour in the heart is responsible for controlling the heart rhythm.

AIML academic Dr Melissa McCradden, who is also a Clinical Research Fellow in AI Ethics with The Hospital Research Foundation, and AI Director with Women's and Children's Health Network (WCHN), provided a brief but thorough discussion on AI’s role in the health sphere and the ethical implications that come with it. And AIML Chief Scientist regaled attendees with a humorous but educational take on ‘why continual learning matters’ – not to mention endless AI-generated images that didn’t quite hit the mark on their prompts.  

Student presentations and panel discussion

The Showcase featured AIML PhD students as well during the Early Career Researcher Presentations and poster sessions. Students Frances Yang, Adam Bethell, Cameron Gordon, Ryan Faulkner, and Xinyu Wang presented their current areas of research and study, and Xinyu Wang brought down the house when he played a rendition of the AIML theme song he'd generated using Chat GPT 4.

Another great segment was the lively panel discussion hosted by AIML’s Institute Manager, Dr Kathy Nicholson and featuring Professor Stephen Gould, computer science professor at The Australian National University and a member of the Kingston AI Group; Dr Melissa McCradden; Professor van den Hengel; and Associate Professor Yao.

The panel was asked a series of thought-provoking questions from Dr Nicholson around responsible and ethical AI. When panellists were asked ‘how do you define responsible AI?’, Professor van den Hengel likened the question to ‘how do you define responsible electricity?’ given the pervasiveness of AI across all industries and sectors.

But the panel became even more animated after Dr Nicholson asked members, ‘which is the greater villain to responsible AI – bias or a lack of transparency?’  After Professor Gould stated that the lack of transparency was the bigger villain because ‘we need bias [because] it helps our patterns work,’ Dr. Yao declared that even though she believed the discussion was a “red herring” because all data sets will pick up the societal inequities and issues that affect it, she stated unequivocally that “bias will always be the villain.”

Click below to see the video montage of the 2024 AIML Research Showcase.