A funding announcement is not greeted with outrage – makes a change

The Australian Research Council announces $32m for sixty eight Linkage Projects, the sort of applied, partnered research the Government approves of.

UNSW won 11,  followed by Monash U (eight), Uni Melbourne (seven), ANU and Uni Queensland (six each) and QUT (five). All up Group of Eight members accounted for their standard two-thirds of grants with 42. Engineering is the dominant field of research, with 11 grants, followed by biological, earth and environmental sciences, with four each.

Among all the usual IT and engineering, Seth Lazar and ANU colleagues have $496 000 to use philosophy, law and sociology “to discover the social costs and benefits of using Artificial Intelligence in insurance, and to design practical interventions.”

“This should benefit insurers and consumers, realising efficiency gains made possible by AI, without unacceptable costs to privacy, fairness, and the unaccountable exercise of power.”

See, despite the veto of six Discovery Grants on Christmas Eve the government isn’t hostile to all HASS research. Unless of course, there were ARC recommended grants that Acting Education Minister Robert vetoed. But there weren’t, the ARC advises the minister approved all ARC recommendations.