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An independent Australian senator, David Pocock, has raised concerns about a report on gambling education funding sent to politicians from an institute based at the University of Sydney, saying it “appears to have been written by AI.”
The report aims to garner support for a $20 million funding request for gambling education, with the document used to explain the OurFutures Institute’s budget submission for funding a gambling prevention education program.
Currently, the institute website there is still an article dedicated to the submission of the federal budget, but it has only two short paragraphs before the text says: “This post has been updated.”
The gambling education funding submission post has been ‘updated’ by the institute
According to The Guardian Australia, which says it has reviewed the review, there are at least 21 references in the entire report where the reference link is broken, where the referenced paper does not appear at all, or where the cited paper appears to be different from the hyperlinked one.
They also say that there are many instances where a statement is not supported by the paper referred to.
The publisher also shared Pocock’s comment on the matter: “I am very concerned about this $20m request for public funding and the evidence review it is based on, which appears to be slop written by AI.
“From my preliminary assessment, the review is full of AI hallucinations, including references to studies that do not exist and statements presented as facts that are completely false or grossly exaggerated.”
A chief executive of the OurFutures Institute, Ken Wallace, was asked about the issues, and he was reported as saying: “An editing tool was only used to change the references found by our research team.”
“Yesterday, we were informed that this resulted in some mismatched, merged or incorrectly formatted citations. evidence-based methods, We apologize for this factual error.”
The institute is believed to be working on updating the submission, with corrected versions to be shared with the original recipients of the background material as well.
In response to the document, independent Senator Kate Chaney also wrote in X: “The gambling lobby uses the worst of AI – if you repeat enough lies, they become credible references, linked to the Productivity Commission and respected researchers.
“No wonder the gambling lobby supports ‘education’. It puts the onus on young people, not the companies targeting them.
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The post Institute aiming for support for gambling education funding accused in AI ‘slop’ report first appeared in ReadWrite.
