For more than three decades my research has centred on one question: how do we build autonomous agents and robots that interact with humans in a fair, transparent, social and natural way?
I am a Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), University of Lisbon, and a senior researcher at INESC-ID. In 2000 I founded GAIPS, the Group on AI for People and Society, one of the internationally leading groups in social AI, which I coordinated for twenty years.
My work engineers AI systems that exhibit specific social capabilities: social perception, social adaptation, following norms, collaboration, resolving social conflicts, and verbal and non-verbal behaviour, among others. I bring these together in a framework for Artificial Social Intelligence, and apply them across intelligent learning environments, social robotics, social simulation, serious games and entertainment. Throughout, I place the human in the loop, working towards AI that is trustworthy and centred on human values: AI for people and society.
I also believe that AI is changing the way we live, work, and, for us scientists, the way we teach and conduct science. Our society will change and new policies must be developed to adapt to this new world. Between April 2024 and June 2025 I served as Secretary of State for Science in the XXIV Portuguese Government, overseeing national science and technology policy, and contributing to this world in change.
