Luke Thorburn

lukethorburn.com CV PDF @[email protected] @luke-thorburn Google Scholar

Education

  1. — Present

    PhD in Computer Science

    King's College London

    Group

    UKRI CDT in Safe & Trusted AI

    Topic

    Bridging-Based Ranking with Diverse Approval

    Supervisors

    Maria Polukarov, Carmine Ventre, Aviv Ovadya

    Researching how spatial models such as the left-right political spectrum (and higher-dimensional variants) can be used in recommender systems to perform bridging-based ranking.

    • Identified a mechanistic connection between diverse approval and partisan unsorting.

    • Co-authored, together with Aviv Ovadya, a survey paper on bridging systems.

    • Co-author, together with Jonathan Stray and Pri Benghani, the Understanding Recommenders research blog at CHAI, UC Berkeley.

    • Served on Staff-Student Liaison Committees for the STAI CDT (2021-22) and Department of Informatics (2021-23).

  2. —

    Master of Science (with Distinction)

    The University of Melbourne

    Specialisation

    Statistics & Stochastic Processes

    Minor

    Pure Mathematics

    Supervisor

    Kostya Borovkov

    Thesis

    On integral representations of fractional Brownian motion

    Grade

    First Class Honours

    Metric and Hilbert Spaces

    Measure Theory

    Functional Analysis

    Mathematical Statistics

    Analysis of High-Dimensional Data

    Computational Statistics and Data Mining

    Advanced Mathematical Statistics

    Random Processes

    Advanced Probability

    Stochastic Calculus with Applications

    Mathematics of Risk

    AMSI Summer School (see below)

  3. —

    AMSI Summer School

    Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute

    Topological Data Analysis

    Probabilistic Methods & Random Graphs

  4. —

    Bachelor of Science

    The University of Melbourne

    Major

    Mathematics & Statistics

    Specialisation

    Statistics & Stochastic Processes

    Grade

    First Class Honours

    Accelerated Mathematics 1

    Accelerated Mathematics 2

    Introductory Microeconomics

    Intermediate Microeconomics

    Physics 1

    Physics 2: Advanced

    Weather and Climate Systems

    Foundations of Computing

    Foundations of Algorithms

    Database Systems

    Probability

    Probability for Inference

    Stochastic Modelling

    Statistics

    Linear Statistical Models

    Modern Applied Statistics

    Vector Calculus

    Differential Equations

    Geometry

    Complex Analysis

  5. —

    Diploma of Languages (Japanese)

    The University of Melbourne

    Japanese 5

    Japanese 6

    Japanese 7

    Japanese 8

    Japanese Through the Media

    Variation in Japanese Language

    Social Problems in Japan

    Reading Japanese Literature

  6. —

    International Baccalaureate Diploma

    St Leonard's College

    Grade

    43/45 (equivalent to notional ATAR of 99.60)

    Mathematics (HL)

    Physics (HL)

    Economics (HL)

    Literature (SL)

    Chemistry (SL)

    Japanese (SL)

    Theory of Knowledge

Affiliations

  1. — Present

    Council on Technology and Social Cohesion

    Member

  2. — Present

    AI & Democracy Foundation

    Research Fellow

  3. — Present

    Build Up

    Associate

    Research collaborator with Build Up, a non-profit focused on digital peacebuilding.

  5. — Present

    GETTING-Plurality Research Network, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, Harvard University

    Member

    Member of the GETTING-Plurality Research Network, working on bridging systems and broader questions around the ethics and governance of emerging technologies.

  6. —

    Center for Constructive Communication, MIT Media Lab

    Research Affiliate

Employment

  1. —

    Meta

    Research Scientist Intern

  2. —

    Resilient Youth Australia

    Data Scientist

    Data analysis, full stack web development and applied statistics research for an organisation that surveys 100,000 Australian school students annually on issues of resilience and mental health.

  3. —

    Ofcom (via research consultancy Pattrn)

    Technical Analyst

    Co-authored a review of methods for evaluating the extent to which recommender systems are implicated in the spread of illegal content.

  4. —

    Future Problem Solving Program Australia

    International Evaluator & Future Scene Writer

    Evaluating written competition booklets and setting competition problems at state, national & international levels.

  5. —

    Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, University of Melbourne

    Research Associate (Machine Learning & Statistics)

    Machine learning and other research as part of a group working to improve the quality of reasoning in intelligence organisations.

    • Prototyped an argument processor—analogous to a word processor but for structured argumentation—which integrates with a large language model to partially automate common argumentative reasoning tasks.

    • Built Navigator, a prototype application that uses argument mining to augment analysts’ abilities to extract insight from large document corpora.

    • Co-facilitated the collaboration of over 100 Australian academics that led to the Roadmap to Recovery report, advising the National Cabinet on strategies for COVID-19 pandemic recovery.

        The Australian · The Age · Pursuit

    • Helped run the 2020 Hunt Challenge, a study that demonstrated that crowdsourced teams can produce analysis of comparable quality to that of professional intelligence analysts.

    • Helped conduct a major Delphi method expert elicitation on the nature of analytic rigour in intelligence work, along with its contributing factors and opportunities for improvement.

    • Conducted research in accordance with open science principles, pre-registering studies (1, 2) and sharing data.

  6. —

    Population Interventions Unit, University of Melbourne

    Data Visualisation

    Worked with epidemiologist Tony Blakely to communicate modelling of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, vaccination, and the consequences of government lockdowns to the public via an interactive web tool.

      ABC News · Sydney Morning Herald · Pursuit

  7. —

    CSIRO Manufacturing (Biomedical)

    Research Assistant

    Built an interactive tool to visualise and explore phase space in protein crystallisation. Originally 6-month appointment through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), with several stints of follow-up work.

      Biomedical Research Victoria blog

  8. —

    The University of Melbourne

    Research Assistant

    Worked with A/Prof. Tony Wirth and Dr James Saunderson in the Department of Computing and Information Systems on algorithms for the finding of densest subgraphs.

  9. —

    Mercer

    Stochastic Modelling

    Fixed-term summer project, stochastically modelling mortalities for a new retirement income product.

Teaching

  3. —

    St Leonard's College

    Student Study Assistant

    Academic tutoring and library support for students after school, on weekends and during school holidays.

  4. —

    Self-employed

    Private Academic Tutor

    Mainly in Mathematics, Physics and Economics. Students ranged from high school to university postgraduate level. Over 300 hours of tutoring experience.

Service

  1. — Present

    Meta

    Community Alignment Advisory Group

    Advising on the alignment of AI systems to collectives.

  2. —

    Knight—Georgetown Institute, Georgetown University

    Working Group

    Member of a working group articulating policy options for improving recommender systems.

  3. —

    Goodenough College

    Treasurer, Members' Council

    Elected member representative and Chair of the Members’ Council Funding Committee for a longstanding, independent, 700-head postgraduate residential college in central London.

  4. —

    newDemocracy Foundation

    Research & Computational Support

    Building an accessible online tool for performing stratified random selection.

  5. —

    Future Problem Solving Program Australia

    Moderniser of Evaluator Resources

    Provided technical advice on the adoption/creation of an electronic evaluation platform. Previously, I rewrote the Evaluator Handbook.

  6. —

    Young Australians Cancer Initiative

    Director

    Inaugural co-director of an enrichment program for Australian high school students focused on cancer science.

  7. —

    iGEM UniMelb

    Videographer

    Produced three short videos to help explain and promote the work of the team from The University of Melbourne entering the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition.

  8. —

    St Leonard's College

    Peer Support Leader

  9. —

    St Leonard's College

    SCOPE Leader

    Mentored an overly reserved grade three student.

Awards & Honours

  1. 2021

    Rae and Edith Bennett Travelling Scholarship

    The University of Melbourne

  2. 2019

    Mathematics and Statistics School Scholarship

    The University of Melbourne

  3. 2018

    Maurice H. Belz Scholarship

    The University of Melbourne

  4. 2016

    Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) Scholar

    Biomedical Research Victoria

    Leaders in Communities Award (LiCA)

    The University of Melbourne

  5. 2015

    Keith Frampton Roll of Honour (Member)

    Future Problem Solving Program Australia

    Highest Mark, Weather & Climate Systems

    The University of Melbourne

  6. 2014

    Second Place, Introductory Microeconomics Film Competition

    The University of Melbourne

  7. 2013

    Year 12 IB Dux

    St Leonard's College

    Full College, Music and House Colours

    St Leonard's College

    Old Collegian's Award for Positive Involvement

    St Leonard's College

  8. 2012

    Monash Prize for Excellence & Year 11 IB Dux

    St Leonard's College

    E. Paul Torrance Youth Award

    Future Problem Solving Program Australia

Grants & Funding

  1. —

    Deliberative AI Specifications and Infrastructure

    With the AI & Democracy Foundation

    Sponsor

    ARIA

    Value

    TBA

  2. —

    Quantifying the Contribution of Online Platforms to Polarization

    Collaboration between Build Up and Sciences Po

    Sponsor

    Project Liberty

    Value

    USD 300,000

  3. —

    Computational Social Choice and Machine Learning for Ethical Decision Making

    Centre for Doctoral Training in Safe & Trusted AI

    Sponsor

    UKRI Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council

    Value

    ≈ GBP 26,000 tuition + GBP 19,000 stipend / year

  4. —

    Momentum Building for Bridging

    Project Funding from Plurality Research Network Conference

    Sponsor

    Plurality Institute

    Value

    USD 2590.26 (amount determined via quadratic voting)

  5. —

    Transfer Learning for Argument Operations

    Artificial Intelligence for Decision Making Initiative (Phase 2)

    Sponsor

    Office of National Intelligence, Commonwealth of Australia

    Value

    AUD 50,000

  6. —

    Augmenting Corpus Analysis through Argument Mining and Networked Notes

    Artificial Intelligence for Decision Making Initiative (Phase 1)

    Sponsor

    Office of National Intelligence, Commonwealth of Australia

    Value

    AUD 20,000

Publications

    Preprints / Working Papers

    Conference Papers

    Workshop Papers

    Journal Articles

    General Press

    Reports

    Policy Input

  7. Toward Democracy Levels for AI

    A Ovadya, L Thorburn, K Redman, F Devine, S Milli, M Revel, A Konya, and A Kasirzadeh

    Pluralistic Alignment @ NeurIPS, 2024.

  25. UNESCO

    L Thorburn and A Ovadya

    “Guidelines for regulating digital platforms”, 2023.

  41. Analytic Rigour in Intelligence

    A Barnett, T Primoratz, R de Rozario, M Saletta, L Thorburn and T van Gelder (alphabetical)

    Hunt Lab for Intelligence Research, 2021.

Talks

  1. Inferred Preferences

    Knight First Amendment Institute  

  2. Sortedness + Recommendation

    MIT CCC

    Meta

    American Philosophical Association  

    Australian National University  

    Imperial College London  

    Build Peace  

    Metagov    

    Harvard University  

  3. Good + Bad Conflict

    ISA

  4. Concreteness

    Build Peace

  5. Mapping the Space of Social Media Regulation

    Ofcom  

    Harvard

  6. How to Measure the Effects of Algorithms

    Department of the Treasury (Australia)  

  7. Error in the Euclidean Preference Model

    IJCAI  

  8. Bridging

    University of Notre Dame

    New Public

    BBC  

    Plurality Institute    

    Goodenough College

    Plurality Research Network Conference    

    London School of Economics  

  9. What Does it Mean to Give Someone What They Want?

    Imperial College London

  10. Epistemic Injustice and AI

    King's College London

  11. Optimizing Language Models for Argumentative Reasoning

    International Workshop on Argumentation and Machine Learning  

  12. Algorithmic Risks to Collective Decision-Making

    Goodenough-Oxford Joint Colloquium on AI and Regulation  

  13. Metaphors for Public Discourse

    Newspeak House  

  14. Argument Processing

    University of Technology Sydney

    Laboratory for Analytic Sciences  

Symposia

  1. 2025

    Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms

    Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University

    panelistattendee

    Annual Convention of the International Studies Association ISA

    speakerattendee

    Qualitative Coding Workshop on Good + Bad Conflict

    Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

    organiser

    Participatory AI Research & Practice Symposium PAIRS

    speakerattendee

  2. 2024

    Pluralistic Alignment Workshop @ NeurIPS NeurIPS

    reviewer

    Digital Democracy Residency

    g0v Community, Taiwan

    participant

    Artificial Intelligence and Democratic Freedoms

    Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University

    discussantparticipant

    Build Peace

    Build Up

    speakerattendee

    Australian AI Safety Forum

    Gradient Institute

    participant

    ACM Conference on Recommender Systems RecSys

    attendeeposter presenter

    Public Interest Social Media Solutions Workshop

    Applied Social Media Lab, Harvard University

    speakerparticipant

    International Conference on Computational Social Science IC2S2

    International Society for Computational Social Science

    attendee

    ACM Conference on Economics and Computation EC

    attendeeposter presenter

    Workshop on Using Deliberative Technologies in Polarized Contexts

    Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

    speakerparticipant

    Center for Human-Compatible AI Annual Workshop CHAI

    attendeeposter presenter

    Convening on Political Economy of AI

    GETTING-Plurality Research Network

    attendee

    Trust and Human Connection in the Age of AI and Social Networks

    MIT Center for Constructive Communication

    attendee

    Shaping the Future of Social Media with Middleware

    Stanford Cyber Policy Center

    participantspeaker

    Project Liberty Institute Summit

    attendee

    Convening on AI & the Future of the Public Square

    Google Jigsaw

    participant

    Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division)

    speaker

    Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence and Catastrophic Risk

    Machine Intelligence & Normative Theory (MINT) Lab, Australian National University

    participant

    Kioloa Workshop on Generative AI and Normative Philosophy of Computing

    Machine Intelligence & Normative Theory (MINT) Lab, Australian National University

    participant

  3. 2023

    Build Peace

    Build Up

    attendeeworkshop facilitator

    Summit on AI and Democracy

    GETTING-Plurality Research Network

    attendeefacilitator

    Psychology of Technology Institute Conference

    attendee

    Launch of Bridging Responsible AI Divides UK BRAID

    attendee

    International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence IJCAI

    speaker

    ACM Conference on Economics and Computation EC

    volunteerattendee

    International Workshop on Computational Social Choice COMSOC

    reviewerattendeeposter presenter

    Plurality Institute Bridging Symposium

    speaker

    Center for Human-Compatible AI Annual Workshop CHAI

    attendeeposter presenter

    International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems AAMAS

    attendeeposter presenter

    The Ethics of Persuasive Technologies

    Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford

    attendee

    Optimizing for What? Algorithmic Amplification and Society

    Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University

    discussantparticipant

    Tech & Democracy: A Better Tech Future Summit

    All Tech is Human

    attendee

    Designing Tech for Social Cohesion

    Council on Technology and Social Cohesion

    attendeeposter presenter

    Plurality Research Network Conference

    University of California, Berkeley

    speaker

  4. 2022

    Safe and Trustworthy AI Workshop STAIws

    UKRI CDT in Safe and Trusted AI, Imperial College London

    participantposter presenter

    Attention: An Interdisciplinary Workshop

    Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics

    speaker

    International Workshop on Argumentation and Machine Learning ArgML

    speaker

    ACM Conference on Economics and Computation EC

    reviewer

    The Race to Regulate AI: Global Comparative Perspectives

    Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford

    attendee

    Oxford-Goodenough Joint Colloquium on AI and Regulation

    Jesus College, University of Oxford and Goodenough College

    participant

  5. 2021

    International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory ADT

    attendee

    Conference for Truth and Trust Online TTO

    attendee

  6. 2020

    International Conference on Computational Models of Argument COMMA

    attendee

  7. 2019

    Effective Altrusim Global EAG

    attendee

    INFORMS Applied Probability Society Conference INFORMS-APS

    attendee

  8. 2017

    Summer Institute on Topics in the History of Economics

    Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University

    participant

  9. 2016

    Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems NeurIPS

    attendee

Memberships

  1. —

    Statistical Society of Australia

  2. — Present

    Trust & Safety Professional Association

  3. — Present

    Newspeak House

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