SRI Seminar Series: Virginia Dignum, “Beyond the AI hype: Balancing innovation and social responsibility” – Jan 22, 2025

Our weekly SRI Seminar Series welcomes Virginia Dignum, a professor in responsible artificial intelligence in the Department of Computing Science and director of the AI Policy Lab at Umeå University, who is also a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Body on AI, and senior advisor to the Wallenberg Foundations.

Dignum’s research focuses on the complex interconnections and interdependencies between people, organizations and technology. Her work ranges from the engineering of practical applications and simulations to the development of formal theories that integrate agency and organization, including a strong methodological design component. She has expertise in the development of AI and regulatory frameworks to promote social good, computational analysis of social interactions, and the design and evaluation of human interaction with autonomous AI agents.

Moderator: Anna Su

About the speaker

Virginia Dignum is a professor in the Department of Computing Science at Umeå University, Sweden, where she leads the Social and Ethical Artificial Intelligence research group, as well as the director of Umeå’s AI Policy Lab. She is also a member of the UN High Level Advisory Body on AI and senior advisor to the Wallenberg Foundations

Dignum is actively involved in several international initiatives on policy and strategy guidelines for AI research and applications. She is a 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, she 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.

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

Dignum is also associated with the Faculty Technology Policy and Management at the Delft University of Technology.

About the SRI Seminar Series

The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.