ADM+S Research Fellow invited to provide evidence to the Federal Parliament
Members of Parliament鈥檚聽House Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training,聽travelled to Sydney to meet with Jose-Miguel and colleagues who are working on an ARC Discovery project investigating the use and regulation of AI in education.
The 45-minute hearing focused聽on preliminary observations connected to two ongoing projects; the panel鈥檚 2024-2026聽听鈥�Artificial intelligence in education:听Democratising policy鈥�, and a 2023-2025聽听鈥�Governing AI, education, and equity together.鈥�
The common objective of both projects is to find ways of involving people directly affected by the deployment of automation in the education sector 鈥� such as teachers and students 鈥� in its governance.
鈥淭he Committee was very interested in how we can do this, and the type of governance measures we can establish now, and in the future,鈥� said Jose-Miguel.
Jose-Miguel鈥檚 contributions highlighted his expertise around regulatory and comparative experience, which he has developed as a Research Fellow with the ADM+S Centre.
He told the Committee of the Centre鈥檚 work around AI regulation, and when asked if AI could degrade human individuality by steering ideologies in a particular way, Jose-Miguel referred to the recent聽聽which explored bias in large language models.
Explaining that bias is embedded in such systems, Jose-Miguel advised that the real risk of using AI platforms is not being able to evaluate the system as a user.
After the formal discussion, Jose-Miguel engaged in further conversations with Committee members about the importance of AI infrastructure for equality and access.
Jose-Miguel鈥檚 focus on AI in education governance complements the Centre鈥檚 broader engagement with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources to support the responsible development of AI governance in general.
鈥淭his meeting indicates that the apex regulator in Australia, that is Parliament, is taking the disruption created by AI in diverse sectors seriously, and are willing to invest their resources in listening to what different actors have to say about it,鈥� he said.
鈥淢y hope is that MPs listen to us when we insist that this is quite new and a trial-and-error approach is absolutely ok.
鈥淟earning from other jurisdiction鈥檚 strengths and errors is much better that just adopting a policy or a regulation that ticks a box and is forgotten for the next few years. I hope that they are sceptical about those who say they have the silver bullet for the governance of AI.鈥�
On the panel, Jose-Miguel was joined by聽Prof. Kalervo Gulson聽from the Education Futures Studio at the University of Sydney,聽Dr. Teresa Swist聽from Western Sydney University, and聽A/Prof. Simon Knight聽from the Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society, University of Technology Sydney.