PhD Position in Justifications in Human-AI Teams for Hybrid Intelligence

Join our team for this fully funded four-year PhD project at Utrecht University! You will explore Justifications in Human-AI teams within the Hybrid Intelligence (HI) project. Hybrid Intelligence, funded by a ten-year Gravitation Grant by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, brings together many prominent AI researchers in the Netherlands. Our vision: to expand human intellect through ethical, explainable, and human-centered Human-AI teams collaborating to achieve common goals.

Your job

For Hybrid Intelligence (HI) teams to function effectively, all members–human and AI alike–must be able to exhibit behaviour that accounts for and is justifiable with respect to the shared team’s ethics and team norms. In this project, you will investigate computational models and mechanisms that enable AI agents in Hybrid Human-AI teams to learn, adapt, and utilise shared team norms through interactions to ensure their actions are aligned and justifiable. This includes exploring how and when AI can provide, or request, justifications for team members’ actions based on the team norms.

The project offers a unique opportunity to tackle questions such as:

• How can we computationally represent and learn evolving team norms in HI systems?
• How can we design AI agent architectures that integrate team norms into their decision-making processes to ensure that both AI and human behaviour is justifiable?
• What computational mechanisms enable the generation and requesting of justifications based on team norms and individual team member characteristics?
• How do AI-generated justifications impact trust and effectiveness within human-AI teams?

As a PhD candidate you will conduct research around the notion of justifiability, developing agent architectures for justified agency, and accounting for the dynamic and personalised nature of team interactions. You will contribute a novel methodology for designing responsible and explainable HI teams with justifiable AI behaviors, and metrics to assess the impact of justifications on team performance and trust. Finally, you will develop a framework for representing and reasoning about team norms and justifications, designing and evaluating algorithms for AI agents to learn, apply, and generate justifications in collaborative settings.

You will be co-supervised by Davide Dell’Anna (Utrecht University) and Myrthe Tielman (Delft University of Technology). As a PhD candidate your principal focus is on conducting scientific research, resulting in a PhD dissertation at the end of the project. Next to this you may be involved in teaching activities for 10-15% of your time, such as supporting the preparation and teaching of Bachelor's and Master's level courses, supervising student theses, managing research infrastructure and participating in public outreach. This position presents an excellent opportunity to develop an academic profile.

Your qualities

You have a technical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence background (Msc), with expertise in one or more of the following areas:

• design and development of intelligent and social agents;
• understanding and modeling of norms, trust, and team dynamics in computational systems.
• Explainable AI and Social and Everyday explainability;
• application of Machine Learning (such as Reinforcement Learning), Symbolic AI techniques (such as formal systems), or NLP techniques, in Human-AI collaboration;
• Human-Computer Interaction and User Studies.

In addition to the required technical expertise, you have the following qualities:

• analytical and problem-solving skills;
• resilience and perseverance;
• intellectual curiosity and a proactive learning attitude;
• a genuine interest in collaboration.
• To do this, we need an inclusive and diverse team of researchers. We especially encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for this job.

Our offer

• a position for 18 months, with an extension to a total of four years upon successful assessment in the first 18 months;
• a gross monthly salary between €2,901 and €3,707 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale P under the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
• 8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.