Virginia Dignum

My research focuses on the complex interconnections and interdependencies between people, organizations and technology. My work ranges from the engineering of practical applications and simulations to the development of formal theories that integrate agency and organization, and includes a strong methodological design component. My current research directions are:

• Responsible artificial intelligence. Which moral and ethical issues arise from the activity of autonomous intelligent agents in teams? How can activity be regulated? How can intelligent agents and other synthetic entities reason about and take decisions on moral questions.
• Analyze and formalization of social interaction. The aim is to study the effect of social and organizational structure taking into account the autonomy and heterogeneity of participants and the societal and legal values holding in the context. To this end, we are developing formal theories and a computational architecture for agent deliberation based on social-practices.
• Design and evaluation of human-agent teamwork. Central research question here is how do people interact (negotiate, trust, cooperate) with autonomous cognitive entities in a social setting and the development of agent-based simulations of complex socio-technical domains.

Given the increasing importance of understang the impact of AI at societal, ethical and legal level, I am actively involved in several international initiatives on policy and strategy guidelines for AI research and applications. As such I am member of GPAI, the Global Partnership on AI, Dutch AI Alliance (ALLAI-NL), the World Economic Forum Council on AI, and the High-Level Expert Group on the Implementation of the UNESCO AI Ethics Recommendation. Previously I was member of European Commission High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethically Aligned Design of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, the Delft Design for Values Institute, the European Global Forum on AI (AI4People), the Responsible Robotics Foundation, the  and of the ADA-AI foundation. 

I am the Program Chair of AAMAS'24, the 23nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, and the Ethics Chair of AAAI'24, the 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

In recognition of my research, I was elected to the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) in 2020, and in 2018 I was appointed Fellow of the European Artificial Intelligence Association (EURAI). In 2006, I received the prestigious Veni grant from NWO (Dutch Organization for Scientific Research) for my work on computational agent-based organizational frameworks. I speak often on the social and ethical impact of AI at conferences, meetings and other events, have published extensively on the topic, and am a member of program committees of most major journals and conferences in AI.

I am also associated with the Faculty Technology Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology. See here what I do there. 

I actively tweet about AI and its social and ethical impact. You can follow me on @vdignum.