""In this think piece we sketch the impacts and implications of corporate AI for institutions with a public interest orientation. We focus on public universities and social services as vital public institutions that have been widely understood as essential to democracy and social justice. Through a ... series of prompts, we aim to provoke conversations, advocacy and policy engagement by providing resources for further thinking and action. We approach the topic through a Data Justice lens. Data Justice is a framework that focuses attention on the societal impacts and social justice implications of data-driven systems, including AI. This approach expands the frame beyond individual privacy, copyright, efficiency and convenience, to centre social justice and public interest concerns. A Data Justice approach includes listening to the most impacted, engaging with civil society organisations, and collective responses. Data Justice challenges the seeming inevitability of Big Tech, aiming instead to foster alternative imaginaries of the society that we want, and then asking what might be the place for AI in a more just future. Writing from settler colonial Australia, our Data Justice approach is grounded in respect for First Nations sovereignty and knowledges, prioritising First Nations expertise. We also draw on traditions of critical sociology, media, and communications scholarship and practice. Critical EdTech and critical GovTech scholarship provides vital starting points – including the inherent tensions between the corporate values of Silicon Valley’s Big Tech and the public interest values of universities in Australia, and the public good mission of social services." (Introduction, page 8) more

"'Listening in' analyses political voice and political listening against the backdrop of the media diversity debates. We focus on community media in Australia with its’ stated commitments to media diversity and to amplifying voices that are rarely heard in the mainstream. We ask to what extent the ... political voice enabled by community and alternative media is heard by decision-makers and opinion leaders in key democratic institutions of government and media." (Introduction, page 7) more